Technically, `busy-wait' means to wait on an event by [spin]ning through a tight or timed-delay loop that polls for the event on each pass, as opposed to setting up an interrupt handler and continuing execution on another part of the task. In applications this is a wasteful technique, and best avoided on time-sharing systems where a busy-waiting program may [hog] the processor. However, it is often unavoidable in kernel programming. In the Linux world, kernel busy-waits are usually referred to as `spinlocks'.
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