swamp

n 1: low land that is seasonally flooded; has more woody plants

than a marsh and better drainage than a bog

2: a situation fraught with difficulties and imponderables; "he

was trapped in a medical swamp"

v 1: drench or submerge or be drenched or submerged [syn: {drench}]

2: fill quickly beyond capacity; as with a liquid; "the

basement was inundated after the storm"; "The images

flooded his mind" [syn: {deluge}, {flood}, {inundate}]

swap

To move a program from fast-access memory

to a slow-access memory ("swap out"), or vice versa ("swap

in"). The term often refers specifically to the use of a

{hard disk} (or a {swap file}) as {virtual memory} or "swap

space".

When a program is to be executed, possibly as determined by a

{scheduler}, it is swapped into {core} for processing; when it

can no longer continue executing for some reason, or the

scheduler decides its {time slice} has expired, it is swapped

out again.

This contrasts with "paging" systems in which only parts of a

program's memory is transfered.

[{Jargon File}]

(1996-11-22)