A method and system is disclosed for dispatching tasks to multiple processors that all share a shared memory. A composite queue size for multiple work queues each having an associated processor is determined. A queue availability flag is stored in shared memory for each processor work queue and is set based upon the composite queue size and the size of the work queue for that processor. Each queue availability flag indicates availability or unavailability of the work queue to accept new tasks. A task is placed in a selected work queue based on that work queue having an associated queue availability flag indicating availability to accept new tasks. The data associated with task dispatching is maintained so as to increase the likelihood that valid copies of the data remain present in each processor's local cache without requiring updating do to their being changed by other processors.