When it comes to understanding the underlying workings of a computer, two terms that often come up are “process” and “thread”. These terms are frequently used interchangeably, but they are actually two different concepts.
A process is the basic unit of work in an operating system. It is an instance of a program that is being executed. Each process has its own memory space, environment variables, and system resources such as file handles and network connections. Processes are isolated from one another, which means that they cannot directly access each other’s memory space.
A thread, on the other hand, is a unit of work within a process. It is a light-weight process that runs independently within a process. Threads share the same memory space and system resources as the process that created them. This allows for faster communication and coordination between threads, as they can share data and resources more easily than processes can.
The key difference between processes and threads lies in their level of abstraction. Processes are a higher level of abstraction, providing a complete execution environment. Threads are a lower level of abstraction, providing a means of executing multiple tasks within a process.
