Highpriority

Highpriority is a term used in computing to describe an attribute assigned to tasks, messages, or resources that signals they should be given precedence in scheduling or processing. It is not a formal standard, but a common label across operating systems, programming runtimes, and messaging systems. In practice, highpriority is implemented by mapping the designation to higher scheduling weights, earlier dispatch, or faster resource access, with the exact behavior depending on the system.

In operating systems and real-time environments, high-priority processes or threads typically preempt lower-priority ones and may be allocated more CPU time or stricter deadlines. Real-time scheduling policies may treat high-priority tasks as hard deadlines to be met, while general-purpose systems use aging or fairness mechanisms to avoid starvation.

In software development, languages and platforms offer explicit priority settings for threads or tasks. For example, thread or process priority classes increase likelihood of execution, while in distributed systems and message queues, messages labeled highpriority may be delivered ahead of normal-priority messages, reducing latency for urgent items.

Risks include priority inversion, where a lower-priority task holds a needed resource, leading to delays for high-priority work; excessive use of high priority can starve other tasks. Mitigations include priority inheritance, ceiling protocols, or time-based aging to gradually raise the priority of waiting tasks.

Etymology and usage notes: highpriority is typically a configuration-level label rather than a universal standard, and its exact effects depend on the platform, scheduler, or queuing system in use.