Techniques for implementing an atomic FIFO queue and system for processing queue elements are described herein. According to one embodiment, in a first thread of execution, new data is atomically merged with existing data of an object via an atomic instruction associated with hardware that executes the first thread. An attempt is made to acquire ownership of the object (exclusive access). If successful, the object is enqueued on an atomic FIFO queue as a continuation element for further processing. Otherwise, another thread of execution is safely assumed to have acquired ownership and taken responsibility to enqueue the object. A second thread of execution processes the atomic FIFO queue and assumes ownership of the continuation elements. The second thread invokes a function member of the continuation element with a data member of the continuation element, the data member including the newly merged data. Other methods and apparatuses are also described.