> Not to take anything away from the parent's thoughtful comment. That important property is, in fact, the definition of lock-free. According to Wikipedia, it'

> Not to take anything away from the parent's thoughtful comment. That important property is, in fact, the definition of lock-free. According to Wikipedia, it's the definition of non-blocking, not the definition of lock-free... which I guess is a correction for both the parent comment and yours. [1] As far as I recall ever seeing, people always talk about it in terms of guaranteed systemwide progress, which I don't find as enlightening as what happens when you pause a thread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-blocking_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-blocking_algorithm