Backpressure - CI/CD Glossary Definition

Backpressure is the mechanism by which a downstream component signals an upstream producer to slow down when it cannot keep up, preventing unbounded queues, memory growth, and crashes.

How it shows up

TCP flow control, bounded queues that block on full, and reactive streams demand signals are all backpressure. Without it, a fast producer overruns a slow consumer until memory runs out.

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