Subj : Re: Importance of Threads To : aisha1112005 From : Giancarlo Niccolai Date : Wed Jan 26 2005 03:23 am aisha1112005@yahoo.co.in wrote: > Hello, > As you said threads get control sequentially but they run > concurrently > (concurrent and not parallel in uniprocessor system).In multiprocessor > system however they may be running in parallel also. > This increases the speed of execution of the process. Even in > uniprocessor system, many a times a thread is blocked or is sleeping > for some resource. In such situations instead of blocking the whole > process, some other thread can be allowed to run. This increases the > processor utilitisation.It does create a slight overhead on the kernel > but that can be reduced by managing the threads at the user level.The > advantages anyway supersedes the drawbacks of using multiple threads > as against a single thread in a process. Uhm, hello. I recognize the point of view I sustain in my on-line article about threading basics; there is some concordance especially in the sequence of the sentences, so there is a possibility that "you" is referred to "me", Giancarlo Niccolai. However, you are writing to a "newsgroup", and not to an "email address", that is, you are sending an e-mail to something like a "public blackboard" that can be read by any person passing by, and not "directly to me". About your specific question: that is exactly what I sustain *except* for one fact: it is not true that the advantages of using threads supersedes *always* the overhead of using a single process. This is generally true when the application can effectively exploit one of the four advantages in parallelizing the process: computational, resource, service or control parallelism. Also, even in this situation, the advantage with respect to a single-thread process may be completely depleted by wrong approaches to threading or extra-heavy synchronization requirements; or in other words, the program must *also* be built efficiently and correctly to perform well. Best regards, Giancarlo Niccolai. .