A buffer, also called buffer memory, is a portion of a computer’s memory that is set aside as a temporary holding place for data that is being sent to or received from an external device, such as a hard disk drive (HDD), keyboard or printer. Buffers have a number of applications in computers. …

What is buffer memory?

In computer science, a data buffer (or just buffer) is a region of a physical memory storage used to temporarily store data while it is being moved from one place to another. … However, a buffer may be used when moving data between processes within a computer.

Why is buffer cache memory needed in Linux?

Linux always tries to use RAM to speed up disk operations by using available memory for buffers (file system metadata) and cache (pages with actual contents of files or block devices). This helps the system to run faster because disk information is already in memory which saves I/O operations.