An area of memory reserved for temporarily holding data before that data is used by a receiving device or application. Buffering protects against the interruption of data flow.
— Computer ScienceTo use a region of memory to hold data that is waiting to be transferred, especially to or from input/output (I/O) devices such as disk drives and serial ports.
— Computer ScienceA quantity of time or materials maintained in the work flow as a cushion against fluctuations in throughput.
— Computer ScienceA temporary storage area for data, often used to ‘smooth out’ incoming audio or video streams. Several seconds worth of material is stored in the buffer and it is then played back from there, so that if there is a brief interruption in the stream your music or video doesn’t stop.
— Computer Science