<
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)