What is the difference between a process and a thread?

Question

What is the technical difference between a process and a thread?

I get the feeling a word like \'process\' is overused and there are also hardware and software threa

Answer 1

Both processes and threads are independent sequences of execution. The typical difference is that threads (of the same process) run in a shared memory space, while processes run in separate memory spaces.

Process

Is a program in execution. it has text section i.e the program code, current activity as represented by the value of program counter & content of processors register. It also includes the process stack that contains temporary data(such as function parameters, return addressed and local variables), and a data section, which contains global variables. A process may also include a heap, which is memory that is dynamically allocated during process run time.

Thread

A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilisation; it comprises a thread ID, a program counter, register set, and a stack. it shared with other threads belonging to the same process its code section, data section and other operating system resources such as open files and signals.

-- Taken from Operating System by Galvin