multithreading

Multithreading is an application-oriented method in which programs are divided into program parts and processes that run independently of each other in parallel program paths.

Multithreading is a software splitting of slow processes into parallel threads, which are processed in parallel by additional instructions of the central processing unit( CPU). A task can contain one or more threads, which can be processed only on certain processors. If a task contains several threads, then these run on several processors. However, this requires that the task is multithreaded.

Under Windows, each thread has a time window that is assigned to the parent task and allocates a certain computing time to the thread. After this time has expired, the next thread is processed instead of this one. Since the switching is relatively fast, it looks like the programs are running simultaneously. In contrast to multithreading, multitasking runs multiple applications in parallel on the computer.

Typical examples of multithreading are editing texts with spell checker working in the background at the same time, or printing documents with simultaneous editing.