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.

(2000-06-17)