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 firehose
syndrome.
3. More loosely, may refer to a buffer overflow not
necessarily related to processing time (as in overrun
screw).
