Master Managed Threading and Synchronization Techniques

hile a "process" is the way that operating systems compartmentalize running applications from each other, a "thread" is a path of execution—the basic unit to which an operating system allocates processor time. A single process comprises one or multiple threads.

Preemptive multitasking operating systems such as Windows store all threads in a thread queue, and execute them by allocating a processor time slice to each thread consecutively. The OS suspends the currently executing thread when its time slice elapses, and resumes running another thread. As the system switches from one thread to another, it saves the thread context (all the information the thread needs to resume execution) of the preempted thread, and reloads the saved thread context of the next thread in the thread queue. Because each time slice is small, it appears to users as if multiple threads are executing simultaneously, even if there is only one processor.