Bufory

Bufory are regions of memory or storage used to hold data temporarily as it moves between producers and consumers or between different parts of a system. They help accommodate speed differences, absorb bursts of activity, and smooth out irregular data flow. Buffers are a fundamental concept in computing and are employed in operating systems, networks, file I/O, multimedia processing, and databases.

Common forms include linear and circular (ring) buffers, as well as double buffering. A circular buffer reuses memory by wrapping around when data is consumed, making it efficient for streaming data. Double buffering maintains two buffers so one can be filled while the other is read, reducing processing stalls. Buffering can be synchronous, where operations block until data is ready, or asynchronous, where data is transferred in the background with signaling. In practice, systems use kernel-level buffers for I/O, network buffers for sending and receiving data, and page or block buffers to cache disk blocks in databases and file systems.

Size and management matter. Smaller buffers reduce latency but may increase the frequency of stalls; larger buffers can improve throughput at the cost of higher memory usage and potential latency. Examples include audio playback buffers to prevent dropouts, video streaming buffers to compensate for network jitter, and disk I/O buffers that smooth slow peripheral devices. Effective buffering requires attention to thread safety, overflow and underflow handling, and clear flushing or synchronization semantics to ensure data integrity and predictable performance.