spsc-ring-threadsafe

Lockless, thread-safe, single-producer, single-consumer, FIFO queue for Python — implemented on a ring buffer in C.

Design

Built on a Lamport ring buffer with C11 _Atomic read/write indexes (acquire/release ordering). Producer and consumer never contend with eachother.

Features:

• Single producer, single consumer, FIFO semantics
• Lockless (no mutexes or spinlocks)
• Non-blocking / async-friendly
• Suitable for shared memory and IPC
• Compatible with no-GIL & subinterpreters
• Low overhead, especially for small messages
• Up to 100x faster than multiprocessing.Queue in the standard library

Benchmarks

Quick Start

import spsc_ring_threadsafe as srt

buf = bytearray(4096)
srt.init(buf)  # initialize as ring buffer

item = b"this is a bytestring message"
srt.put(buf, item)

result = srt.get(buf)
print(result.decode())

Output:

this is a bytestring message

Shared Memory

from multiprocessing import shared_memory
import spsc_ring_threadsafe as srt


shm_name = "app_123456"

# Process 1 (producer)
a = shared_memory.SharedMemory(create=True, size=4096, name=shm_name)
srt.init(a.buf) # initialize as ring buffer

item = b"hello from shared memory!"
srt.put(a.buf, item)
a.close()


# Process 2 (consumer)
b = shared_memory.SharedMemory(name=shm_name)
result = srt.get(b.buf)
print(result.decode())

b.close()
b.unlink()

Output:

hello from shared memory!

API Reference

Exceptions

Functions

spsc_ring_threadsafe.init(buf)

Initialize a mutable buffer as a ring buffer (this function sets the read + write indexes to zero).

⚠️ Thread safety: Initialization is not thread-safe. Initialize once before any concurrent access, or provide your own synchronization.

spsc_ring_threadsafe.put(buf, item)

Insert an item into the ring buffer. Non-blocking.

Raises: QueueFullError if the buffer has insufficient space.

⚠️ Buffer must be zeroed or initialized before use.

⚠️ Thread safety: Only a single producer is allowed for a given queue! Multiple producers are NOT thread-safe.

spsc_ring_threadsafe.get(buf)

Remove and return an item from the ring buffer. Non-blocking.

Returns: Buffer-compatible object containing the message.

Raises: QueueEmptyError if no message is available.

⚠️ Buffer must be zeroed or initialized before use.

⚠️ Thread safety: Only a single consumer is allowed for a given queue! Multiple consumers are NOT thread-safe.

Installation

uv add spsc-ring-threadsafe

or

pip install spsc-ring-threadsafe

Development

Run tests

uv run python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Run benchmarks

uv pip install -e . --force-reinstall --no-deps
uv run python tests/benchmark.py

Run dev script

uv pip install -e . --force-reinstall --no-deps
uv run python tests/dev.py

LLM Usage Disclosure

Tests and benchmarks were written with assistance from AI models. All C code is written by hand.