Encyclopedia

circular buffer

Also found in: Wikipedia.

circular buffer

(programming)
An area of memory used to store a continuous stream of data by starting again at the beginning of the buffer after reaching the end. A circular buffer is usually written by one process and read by another. Separate read and write pointers are maintained. These are not allowed to pass each other otherwise either unread data would be overwritten or invalid data would be read.

A circuit may implement a hardware circular buffer.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

circular buffer

An area of memory or a dedicated hardware circuit that is used to store incoming data. When the buffer is filled, new data are written starting at the beginning of the buffer. Circular buffers are typically used to hold data written by one process and read by another. In such cases, separate read and write pointers are used that are not allowed to cross each other so that unread data cannot be overwritten by new data.
Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.
Mentioned in
References in periodicals archive
After quantifying percent habitat type in each circular buffer, we adapted the compositional habitat analysis proposed by Aebischer and others (1993) by defining habitat available in the surrounding area as all habitat available to the fawn.
In addition, by deploying a circular buffer within the reception gateway, satellite TV providers can further expand their offering to include on all screens advanced services such as trick play and start-over TV for increased monetization.
The logger utilizes a circular buffer in flash memory (up to 70,000 records).
For all estates a landscape categorisation was determined within a circular buffer equal to the estate area and centred on the grid reference provided, using a geographical information system (MapInfo Professional 9.5, Pitney Bowes Software Ltd.
A circular buffer is a fixed-size memory region, which is considered to be connected end-to-end virtually.
A 250-metre circular buffer was generated around each intersection using latitude-longitude coordinates to determine overlapping census Dissemination Areas (DAs).
Such events are logged in a target-resident circular buffer by ThreadX, with time-stamping and active core-t-hread identification so they can be displayed later in the proper time sequence for the appropriate core.
The rest of this buffer is reserved to carry the data in the form of circular buffer (See Fig.
Copyright © 2003-2025 Farlex, Inc Disclaimer
All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional.