Operating Systems · Concurrency

Threads

Multiple independent execution paths sharing one process's address space.

Also known as: thread control block, TCB, multithreading, fork-join.

Start a lesson on Threads

Learn first

• The process abstraction: A running program's isolated illusion of its own CPU and memory, tracked by the OS as a process control block.

Leads to

• Race conditions and critical sections: What goes wrong when two threads touch the same data at the same time without coordination.

Related topics

• CPU scheduling basics: The policy that decides which ready process runs next, and for how long.