Overview#

Thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the Operating System or an Application.Thread is a locus of control inside a running Application. Think of it as a place in the Application that is being run, plus the stack of method calls that led to that place to which it will be necessary to return through.

Just as a process represents a Virtual Machine, the Thread abstraction represents a virtual CPU. Making a new thread simulates making a fresh processor inside the Virtual Machine represented by the process. This new virtual CPU runs the same program and shares the same memory as other threads in process.

Thread differ from traditional multitasking Operating System processes in that:

• processes are typically independent, while threads exist as subsets of a Processes
• processes carry considerably more state information than threads, whereas multiple threads within a process share process state as well as memory and other resources
• processes have separate address spaces, whereas threads share their address space
• processes interact only through Operating System-provided Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms
• context switching between threads in the same process is typically faster than context switching between processes.

Systems such as Windows NT and OS2 are said to have cheap threads and expensive processes; in other Operating Systems there is not so great a difference except the cost of an address space switch which on some architectures (notably x86) results in a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) flush. (as in Light-Weight Process)

More Information#

There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:

• Asynchronous Outbound Synchronization
• Change Cache
• Concurrency
• Idle thread
• Light-Weight Process
• MSFT Access Token
• N4u.server.thread-stack-size
• NDS Thread Pool
• NDS Threads
• Ndsconfig Parameters
• Password Flow From Active Directory to eDirectory
• Primary Access Token
• Processes
• Ready task
• Securable object
• Task
• Thread
• Thread delay
• Thread pool
• Time slicing
• User mode and Kernel mode
• Waiting task
• Worker thread

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• [#1] - Concurrency_(computer_science) - based on information obtained 2018-03-20
• [#2] - Reading 17: Concurrency - based on information obtained 2019-12-27