Busy Beaver
<theory>
(BB) One of a series of sets of Turing Machine programs. The BBs in the Nth set are programs of N states that produce a larger finite number of ones on an initially blank tape than any other program of N states. There is no program that, given input N, can deduce the productivity (number of ones output) of the BB of size N.
The productivity of the BB of size 1 is 1. Some work has been done to figure out productivities of bigger Busy Beavers - the 7th is in the thousands.Last updated: 1994-10-24
busy-loop
tight loopbusy-wait
To wait for an event by spinning through a tight loop or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. This is a wasteful technique, best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may hog the processor.
[Jargon File]Last updated: 1999-06-10
Nearby terms:
bus network ♦ bus topology ♦ Busy Beaver ♦ busy-loop ♦ busy-wait ♦ Butterfly Common LISP
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