2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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busy-wait
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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vi. Used of human behavior, conveys that the subject is busy waiting for
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someone or something, intends to move instantly as soon as it shows up, and
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thus cannot do anything else at the moment. Can't talk now, I'm busy-waiting
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till Bill gets off the phone. Technically, busy-wait means to wait on an
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event by spin ning through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the
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event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and
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continuing execution on another part of the task. In applications this is a
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wasteful technique, and best avoided on timesharing systems where a
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busy-waiting program may hog the processor. However, it is often unavoidable
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in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel busy-waits are usually
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referred to as spinlocks.
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