Terminology: Threads and Processes
Christopher J. Cameron, Steve Lantz
Cornell Center for Advanced Computing
Revisions: 3/2022, 9/2014 (original)
This topic defines fundamental parallel programming terminology by identifying the technical terms associated with the intuitive concepts developed in the Introduction to Parallel Computation topic.
Objectives
After you complete this topic, you should be able to:
- Define thread and process as they are used in computing
- Explain the differences between serial and parallel code
- Define the term task in terms of high performance computing
- Distinguish between distributed memory parallelism and shared memory parallelism
Prerequisites
This topic assumes a basic understanding of serial (single-threaded) programming and familiarity with computer terminology.