BUSY-WAIT


Meaning of BUSY-WAIT in English

< programming > To wait for an event by spinning through a tight loop or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. This is a wasteful technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may hog the processor.

[ Jargon File ]

(1999-06-10)

FOLDOC computer English dictionary.      Английский словарь по компьютерам FOLDOC.