Abstract: Shared memory management apparatus and techniques are disclosed. A shared memory provides queues for storing communication traffic that is to be scheduled for transmission. Based on amounts of communication traffic stored in the queues, a determination is made as to whether or not communication traffic is to be removed from the shared memory, and if so, communication traffic is removed. Traffic may be selected for removal based on one or more of: a scheduling algorithm for scheduling communication traffic out of the queues for transmission, thresholds associated with the queues, and latency of the communication traffic stored in the queues. Removal of communication traffic from the shared memory is coordinated with scheduling of communication traffic in some embodiments.