PPT Slide

I/O Buffering

• Why buffer?
  • I/O too slow
  • not possible to swap out a whole process
  • risk of single-process deadlock
  • page in memory would have to be locked

• I/O devices are:
  • block-oriented: disk and other storage devices
  • stream-oriented: terminals, printers, com ports, mouse

• Types of buffers (blocks, line or byte at-a-time)
  • single buffer
  • double
  • circular

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