Definition of Process and Threads.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Definition of Process and Threads.
Process:-
A process is a collection of following.
• Virtual memory space
• Code
• Data
• System resources.
Thread:-
A thread is code that is to be serially executed within a process. A processor executes threads and not process. Below given is the framework of process and threads.

[Process]
• Virtual memory
• Data
[Thread]
• Primary
• Secondary

Attributes of process and threads.
• A win32 application has at least one process.
• A process has at least one thread called primary thread. A process can have multiple threads in addition to primary thread.
• Processes communicate with one another.
• A thread continues to execute until it is killed or being interrupted by a thread with higher priority.
• Each thread shares that process global variables and resources.
• A thread scheduler determines when and how often to execute a thread accordingly to a combination of the process’s priority class attribute and thread’s base priority.