Buffer

From Unofficial BOINC Wiki

[edit] General

The location of process of storing additional work for later processing. The work in the Work Buffer is there to smooth out any problems in the transfer of Work Units and Results between computer systems, or computer system components so that the most efficient and complete utilization of the computing resource occurs.

The issue in Distributed Computing is that the resources involved in the complete process may not always be available when a connection would need to occur. In the case of the BOINC Client Software the Participant's Computer may have completed processing on the last Work Unit on-hand. At that point, without buffering of work, if the Project's Data Server was unavailable then the Participant's Computer would be "starved" for work.

With a Work Buffer, on the other hand, additional work could have been maintained on the Participant's Computer in the Work Buffer so that even if the Project's Data Server is off-line the Participant's Computer has additional work and can continue processing and producing Results.