búfer

Búfer, in computing, is a region of memory or a data structure used to store data temporarily while it is being transferred between two components that operate at different speeds or with different data representations.

Buffers can be implemented in software or hardware. In software, they are typically arrays or linked lists. A common type is the circular (ring) búfer, which uses a fixed size and read/write indices to track where to read and write. Double buffering uses two buffers so one can be filled while the other is processed, reducing latency and improving smoothness in streaming and rendering contexts.

Buffers serve several roles: smoothing bursts in input/output, decoupling producer and consumer rates, buffering network packets, and caching data for multimedia playback or disk I/O. They help absorb variations in processing time and data arrival, but introduce latency and can overflow or underflow if not sized or managed properly.

Design considerations include buffer capacity, timing behavior (blocking vs non-blocking reads), and overflow handling. In hardware, búferes exist in device controllers and memory hierarchies, sometimes as part of a cache. In software, operating systems provide buffer caches and I/O buffers via APIs and system calls.

See also: cache, queue, ring buffer, memory buffer.