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Before we go further, some definitions

Uniprogramming : Running one process at one time (such as on MS/DOS or the Macintosh (old)).

Easier for OS builder. Gets rid of the problems associated with concurrency, by removing it! For a PC, the idea was - one user does only one thing at a time - so whats the point of having multiple operations active

Harder for user; need to take a coffee break every time something prints.

Mutliprogramming : More than one process active at a time (Unix and OS/2)

often called multitasking, but that could mean something else, as we shall soon see.

Multithreading : A single program made up of a number of different concurrent activities (also called multitasking - as in Ada).

Anh hunh ... so ... aaaa ... what's a thread ?

"the best way to avoid a temptation is to yield to it!



Omer F Rana
Thu Feb 6 16:13:26 GMT 1997