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]
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