overrun

1. A frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can

be consumed, especially in serial line communications. For

example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character

per millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two characters

and the machine takes longer than 2 milliseconds to get to

service the interrupt, at least one character will be lost.

2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications. "I forgot

to pay my electric bill due to mail overrun." "Sorry, I got

four phone calls in 3 minutes last night and lost your message

to overrun." When thrashing at tasks, the next person to

make a request might be told "Overrun!" Compare firehosesyndrome.

3. More loosely, may refer to a buffer overflow not

necessarily related to processing time (as in overrunscrew).

[Jargon File]