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Busy Waiting
In computer science and software engineering, busy-waiting, busy-looping or spinning is a technique in which a process repeatedly checks to see if a condition is true, such as whether keyboard input or a lock is available. Spinning can also be used to generate an arbitrary time delay, a technique that was necessary on systems that lacked a method of waiting a specific length of time. Processor speeds vary greatly from computer to computer, especially as some processors are designed to dynamically adjust speed based on current workload. Consequently, spinning as a time-delay technique can produce inconsistent or even unpredictable results on different systems unless code is included to determine the time a processor takes to execute a "do nothing" loop, or the looping code explicitly checks a real-time clock. In most cases spinning is considered an anti-pattern and should be avoided, as processor time that could be used to execute a different task is instead wasted on useless act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of Computer architecture, hardware and Software engineering, software). Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of computational problem, problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics (computer science), Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signal (computing)
Signals are standardized messages sent to a running program to trigger specific behavior, such as quitting or error handling. They are a limited form of inter-process communication (IPC), typically used in Unix, Unix-like, and other POSIX-compliant operating systems. A signal is an asynchronous notification sent to a process or to a specific thread within the same process to notify it of an event. Common uses of signals are to interrupt, suspend, terminate or kill a process. Signals originated in 1970s Bell Labs Unix and were later specified in the POSIX standard. When a signal is sent, the operating system interrupts the target process's normal flow of execution to deliver the signal. Execution can be interrupted during any non-atomic instruction. If the process has previously registered a signal handler, that routine is executed. Otherwise, the default signal handler is executed. Embedded programs may find signals useful for inter-process communications, as signals are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volatile Variable
In computer programming, a variable is said to be ''volatile'' if its value can be read or modified asynchronously by something other than the current thread of execution. The value of a volatile variable may spontaneously change for reasons such as: sharing values with other threads; sharing values with asynchronous signal handlers; accessing hardware devices via memory-mapped I/O (where you can send and receive messages from peripheral devices by reading from and writing to memory). Support for these use cases varies considerably among the programming languages that have the volatile keyword. Volatility can have implications regarding function calling conventions and how variables are stored, accessed and cached. In C and C++ In C and C++, volatile is a type qualifier, like const, and is a part of a type (e.g. the type of a variable or field). The behavior of the volatile keyword in C and C++ is sometimes given in terms of suppressing optimizations of an optimizing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BogoMips
BogoMips (from "bogus" and MIPS) is a crude measurement of CPU speed made by the Linux kernel when it boots to calibrate an internal busy-loop. An often-quoted definition of the term is "the number of million times per second a processor can do absolutely nothing". Eric S Raymond, and Geoff Mackenzie, published on the Internet in the early 1990s, untraceable origin. BogoMips is a value that can be used to verify whether the processor in question is in the proper range of similar processors, i.e. BogoMips represents a processor's clock frequency as well as the potentially present CPU cache. It is not usable for performance comparisons among different CPUs. History In 1993, Lars Wirzenius posted a Usenet message explaining the reasons for its introduction in the Linux kernel on comp.os.linux: : .. : MIPS is short for Millions of Instructions Per Second. It is a measure for the computation speed of a processor. Like most such measures, it is more often abused than used properl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asynchronous I/O
In computer science, asynchronous I/O (also non-sequential I/O) is a form of input/output processing that permits other processing to continue before the I/O operation has finished. A name used for asynchronous I/O in the Windows API is '' overlapped I/O''. Input and output (I/O) operations on a computer can be extremely slow compared to the processing of data. An I/O device can incorporate mechanical devices that must physically move, such as a hard drive seeking a track to read or write; this is often orders of magnitude slower than the switching of electric current. For example, during a disk operation that takes ten milliseconds to perform, a processor that is clocked at one gigahertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base un ... could have performed ten million instruct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polling (computer Science)
Polling, or interrogation, refers to actively sampling the status of an external device by a client program as a synchronous activity. Polling is most often used in terms of input/output (), and is also referred to as polled or software-driven . A good example of hardware implementation is a watchdog timer. Description Polling is the process where the computer or controlling device waits for an external device to check for its readiness or state, often with low-level hardware. For example, when a printer is connected via a parallel port, the computer waits until the printer has received the next character. These processes can be as minute as only reading one bit. This is sometimes used synonymously with ' busy-wait' polling. In this situation, when an operation is required, the computer does nothing other than check the status of the device until it is ready, at which point the device is accessed. In other words, the computer waits until the device is ready. Polling also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HLT (x86 Instruction)
In the x86 computer architecture, HLT (halt) is an assembly language instruction which halts the central processing unit (CPU) until the next external interrupt is fired. Interrupts are signals sent by hardware devices to the CPU alerting it that an event occurred to which it should react. For example, hardware timers send interrupts to the CPU at regular intervals. Most operating systems execute a HLT instruction when there is no immediate work to be done, putting the processor into an idle state. In Windows NT, for example, this instruction is run in the " System Idle Process". On x86 processors, the opcode of HLT is 0xF4. On ARM processors, the similar instructions are WFI (Wait For Interrupt) and WFE (Wait For Event). History on x86 All x86 processors from the 8086 onward had the HLT instruction, but it was not used by MS-DOS prior to 6.0 and was not specifically designed to reduce power consumption until the release of the Intel DX4 processor in 1994. MS-DOS 6.0 provided a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Program Counter
The program counter (PC), commonly called the instruction pointer (IP) in Intel x86 and Itanium microprocessors, and sometimes called the instruction address register (IAR), the instruction counter, or just part of the instruction sequencer, is a processor register that indicates where a computer is in its program sequence. Usually, the PC is incremented after fetching an instruction, and holds the memory address of (" points to") the next instruction that would be executed. Processors usually fetch instructions sequentially from memory, but ''control transfer'' instructions change the sequence by placing a new value in the PC. These include branches (sometimes called jumps), subroutine calls, and returns. A transfer that is conditional on the truth of some assertion lets the computer follow a different sequence under different conditions. A branch provides that the next instruction is fetched from elsewhere in memory. A subroutine call not only branches but saves the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JMP (x86 Instruction)
In the x86 assembly language, the JMP instruction performs an unconditional jump. Such an instruction transfers the flow of execution by changing the program counter. There are a number of different opcodes that perform a jump; depending on whether the processor is in real mode or protected mode, and an override instruction is used, the instructions may take 16-bit, 32-bit, or segment:offset pointers. There are many different forms of jumps: relative, conditional, absolute and register-indirect jumps. The following examples illustrate: # a relative jump with a 16-bit pointer; # a long jump (inter-segment), a relative jump with a 32-bit pointer; # and a register-indirect absolute jump using the EAX register. (Note that although the first and second jumps are relative, commonly the destination address is shown instead of the relative offset as encoded in the opcode.) Example one: Load IP with the new value 0x89AB, then load CS with 0xACDC and IP with 0x5578. JMP 0x89AB JMP 0 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Netwide Assembler
The Netwide Assembler (NASM) is an assembler and disassembler for the Intel x86 architecture. It can be used to write 16-bit, 32-bit (IA-32) and 64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ... (x86-64) programs. It is considered one of the most popular assemblers for Linux and X86, x86 chips. It was originally written by Simon Tatham with assistance from Julian Hall. , it is maintained by a small team led by H. Peter Anvin. It is open-source software released under the terms of a simplified (2-clause) BSD licenses, BSD license. Features NASM can output several binary formats, including COFF, OMF, a.out (file format), a.out, Executable and Linkable Format (ELF), Mach-O and binary file (.bin, binary disk image, used to compile operating systems), though position-indep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sleep()
A computer program (process, task, or thread) may sleep, which places it into an inactive state for a minimum period of time. Eventually the expiration of an interval timer, or the receipt of a signal or interrupt causes the program to resume execution. Usage A typical ''sleep'' system call takes a time value as a parameter, specifying the minimum amount of time that the process is to sleep before resuming execution. The parameter typically specifies seconds, although some operating systems provide finer resolution, such as milliseconds or microseconds. Windows On Windows, the Sleep() function takes a single parameter of the number of milliseconds to sleep. The Sleep() function is included in kernel32.dll. The function has a resolution no higher than the current timer resolution, typically 16ms but at minimum 1ms, adjustable via the family of "media timer" APIs. For higher precisions, it is necessary to use a busy loop over , such as the one used in gnulib. Unix On ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resource Starvation
In computer science, resource starvation is a problem encountered in concurrent computing where a process is perpetually denied necessary resources ''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically feasible and Culture, culturally Sustainability, sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and want ... to process its work. Starvation may be caused by errors in a scheduling or mutual exclusion algorithm, but can also be caused by resource leaks, and can be intentionally caused via a denial-of-service attack such as a fork bomb. When starvation is impossible in a concurrent algorithm, the algorithm is called starvation-free, lockout-freed or said to have finite bypass. This property is an instance of liveness, and is one of the two requirements for any mutual exclusion algorithm; the other being correctness. The name "finite bypass" means that any process (concurrent part) of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
