Thursday, October 11, 2012

What is the meaning of the term "busy waiting"?


What is the meaning of the term "busy waiting"?
In computer systems organization or operating systems, "busy waiting" refers to a process that keeps checking something (e.g., an I/O device) to see if it is ready so that it can proceed with the processing.


The repeated execution of a loop of code while waiting for an event to occur is called busy-waitin
http://www.coolinterview.com/interview/21017/

processes waiting on a semaphore must constantly check to see if the semaphore is not zero. This continual looping is clearly a problem in a real multiprogramming system (where often a single CPU is shared among multiple processes). This is called busy waiting and it wastes CPU cycles. When a semaphore does this, it is called a spinlock.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Operating_System_Design/Processes/Semaphores

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