A method and system are described to compute a status for a circular queue within a memory device. A head pointer and a tail pointer are maintained to identify a head entry and a tail entry, respectively, within the queue. In response to an updating of at least one of the head pointer and the tail pointer, at least one of a near-full or a near-empty condition is detected. The detection is performed utilizing parallel operations. The detection of the near-empty and/or near-full conditions may be useful to avoid underflow and overflow errors.