round robin \round" rob"in\, round-robin \round"-rob"in\(round"
   r[o^]b"[i^]n), n.
   1. Any series or sequence of actions.
      [PJC]

   2. A document circulated from one person to another in a
      group, often with comments added by each recipient.
      [PJC]

   3. A petition or similar document, in which the signatures
      are arranged in circular form in order to conceal the
      order of signing.
      [PJC]

   4. (Sports) A tournament in which each contestant plays
      against every other contestant at least once; a failure to
      win any contest does not result in elimination from the
      tournament. Contrasted with elimination tournament
      [PJC]

round-robin

    A scheduling algorithm in which processes are
   activated in a fixed cyclic order.  Those which cannot proceed
   because they are waiting for some event (e.g. termination of a
   child process or an input/output operation) simply return
   control to the scheduler.  The virtue of round-robin
   scheduling is its simplicity - only the processes themselves
   need to know what they are waiting for or how to tell if it
   has happened.  However, if a process goes back to sleep just
   before the event for which it is waiting occurs then the event
   will not get handled until all the other processes have been
   activated.

   Compare priority scheduling.

   (1996-02-10)