Thrash
To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful.
Paging or
swapping systems that are overloaded waste most of their time moving data into and out of
core (rather than performing useful computation) and are therefore said to thrash.
Thrashing can also occur in a
cache due to
cache conflict or in a
multiprocessor (see
ping-pong).
Someone who keeps changing his mind (especially about what to work on next) is said to be thrashing.
A person frantically trying to execute too many tasks at once (and not spending enough time on any single task) may also be described as thrashing.
Compare multitask.
[
Jargon File]
