Serial Queue

Definitions

1. A dispatch queue that executes tasks one at a time in FIFO order, ensuring mutual exclusion without explicit locks — central to Apple's Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), where it replaces fine-grained locking for thread-safe access to shared resources.

   In plain English: A task queue that runs only one task at a time in order, preventing conflicts without needing traditional locks.

   Example: "Put all Core Data writes on a serial queue so you never have two threads mutating the managed object context simultaneously."

Related Terms

• Actor
• Async
• Async/Await
• asyncio
• BEAM
• Channel
• Coroutine
• Event Loop