Explain the concept of thread, Computer Engineering

Assignment Help:

The Concept of Thread

A thread is a sequential flow of control within a process. A process is able to have one or more threads. Threads have their own register-values and program-counter but they share memory space and other resources of the process. Every process begins with a single thread. Through the execution, other threads can be created as and when required. Similar to processes, every thread has an execution state (terminated, ready, blocked or running). A thread has right to use the memory address space and resources of its process. Threads have similar life cycles as processes do. A single processor system may support concurrency by switching execution among two or more threads. A multi processor system may support parallel concurrency by executing a separate thread on every processor. There are three fundamental techniques in concurrent programming languages for terminating and creating threads: 

  • Unsynchronised creation and termination - In this mode threads are created and terminated by means of library functions for example START_PROCESS, CREATE_PROCESS, START_THREAD, CREATE_THREAD and. Thus because of these function calls a new thread or process is created and starts executing independent of its parents.
  • Synchronized termination and unsynchronised creation: This manner uses two instructions: JOIN and FORK. The FORK instruction creates a new thread or process. When the parent needs the child's (thread or process) result, it calls JOIN instruction. At this junction two processes (threads) are synchronised.
  • Synchronised termination and creation: The most often system construct to implement synchronization is COBEGIN...COEND. The threads among the COBEGIN...COEND construct are implemented in parallel. The termination of parent-child is suspended till all child threads are terminated.

We can think of a thread as essentially a lightweight process. Though, threads propose a number of advantages over processes. The advantages are as follows:

a)  It does not take so much time to create and terminate a new thread than to create and terminate a process. The reason is that a newly created thread uses the current process address space.  

b)  It does not take so much time to switch between two threads within a common process, partly since the newly created thread uses current process address space. 

c)  Less communication overheads -- communicating between the threads of one process is simple since the threads share amongst other entities the address space. So, data generated by one thread is right away available to all other threads.


Related Discussions:- Explain the concept of thread

Reading decision trees, Reading Decision Trees: However we can justifi...

Reading Decision Trees: However we can justified by see that a link between decision tree representations and logical representations that can be exploited to make it easier t

General concepts of links and association, General Concepts of links and as...

General Concepts of links and association A link is a conceptual or physical connection among objects for instance. Mathematically, you can define a link as a tuple which is a

Is there a macro recording interface in gimp, Not at this time. With GIMP b...

Not at this time. With GIMP based on GEGL, so that all changes are non-destructive, it will be much easier to execute this feature by just remembering all nodes in given range and

What is macro, A series of keystrokes and mouse clicks that can be abbrevia...

A series of keystrokes and mouse clicks that can be abbreviated into a one keystroke or mouse click.

What is home shopping, Home Shopping TV broadcast of goods for purchase...

Home Shopping TV broadcast of goods for purchase, sent directly to a viewer . This online shopping is available because of e-commerce.

IT PMP project managemnet., Identify at least eight milestones for this pro...

Identify at least eight milestones for this project. Write a one-page paper describing each milestone using the SMART criteria?

Anu, write a program to find the area under the curve y=f(x) between x=a an...

write a program to find the area under the curve y=f(x) between x=a and y=b integrate y=f(x) between the limits of a and b. the area under a curve between two points can be found b

What do you understand by a file system, Problem (a) What do you mean...

Problem (a) What do you meant by a file system? (b) Mention the five categories of data for a basic file system reference model. What is the use of such a reference model

Mips simulator: testing, Your code will be tested using a command script. T...

Your code will be tested using a command script. The script is available on Blackboard in the archive MIPSimTest.zip. It contains a ReadMe file that explains how to run the script

Explain the term - restating the requirements, Restating the Requirements ...

Restating the Requirements To have clarity of analytical model of system you must state requirements specific performance constraints with optimization criteria in one documen

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd