1. First look
- Process is a running program.
- Thread is a single sequence stream within a process (light-weight process).
Another way to think of this is that each thread is very much like a separate process, except for one difference: they share the same address space and thus can access the same data.
2. Key Differences
| Process | Thread |
|---|---|
| Process means any program is in execution. | Thread means a segment of a process. |
| Take more time to terminate/create/context switching. | Take less time. |
| The process is isolated. | Threads share memory. |
3. E.g.
Imagine if a process is a chrome.exe running.
Threads can be: Handle downloading task, handle display the page, handle user’s interactions. (Multi-threads).
4. Thread vs Multi-threads
Source: Neso Academy.
Multi-threads have 4 key advantages: Responsiveness, Resource sharing, Economy (create/context switching), Utilization of multi-processor architectures.