Is there a term for a buffer that contains data only for a time?

Question

Various kinds of buffers have different names that more or less describe the functionality that they achieve such as the FIFO, or the circular buffer. They are both buffers, and serve similar purposes however their implementations are different.

I have a kind of buffer that only holds the last X seconds worth of data. So at any time when I read it I can expect the data to be within the last X seconds. Any data that is older than X is constantly dropped. Is there already a name for this kind of buffer?

Answer 1

We usually call a buffer that holds most recently read data a cache.

There's a key difference between a buffer and a cache: caches save time by making the access of frequently used data faster by avoiding physical reads of data that you will likely need again soon, whereas buffers save time by avoiding many small writes or reads by holding the data until a certain amount is reached before writing from memory to disk (flushing) or viceversa, allowing for fewer, biggers reads or writes. In the case of video and audio buffers avoid skipping or waiting times by holding an amount of the streamed data before reproduction.