In an operating system, a thread is a separate execution path within a program. It is a lightweight process that the operating system can schedule and run concurrently with other threads. Threads share the same memory and resources as the program that created them, enabling multiple threads to collaborate and work efficiently within a single program. A thread is a single sequence stream within a process, and each thread belongs to exactly one process. In an operating system that supports multithreading, the process can consist of many threads.
Threads are used to achieve parallelism by dividing a process into multiple threads. For example, in a browser, multiple tabs can be different threads, and MS Word uses multiple threads for formatting text, processing inputs, etc.. Multithreading is a technique used in operating systems to improve the performance and responsiveness of computer systems.
There are two types of threads in an operating system: user-level threads and kernel-level threads. User-level threads are managed by the user-level thread library, while kernel-level threads are managed by the operating system. User-level threads are more effective and efficient, and context switching takes less time than kernel threads.
Benefits of using threads in an operating system include minimizing context switching time, providing concurrency within a process, efficient communication, and allowing utilization of multiprocessor architectures to a greater scale and efficiency.
