| 1. | a sequence or series. |
| 2. | a petition, remonstrance, or the like, having the signatures arranged in circular form so as to disguise the order of signing. |
| 3. | a letter, notice, or the like, circulated from person to person in a group, often with individual comments being added by each. |
| 4. | Sports. a tournament in which all of the entrants play each other at least once, failure to win a contest not resulting in elimination. |
round-robin algorithm
A scheduling algorithm in which processes are activated in a fixed cyclic order. Those which cannot proceed because they are waiting for some event (e.g. termination of a child process or an input/output operation) simply return control to the scheduler. The virtue of round-robin scheduling is its simplicity - only the processes themselves need to know what they are waiting for or how to tell if it has happened. However, if a process goes back to sleep just before the event for which it is waiting occurs then the event will not get handled until all the other processes have been activated.
Compare priority scheduling.
(1996-02-10)