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soerenmartius/processes-vs-threads.csv

Last active May 5, 2020 18:49
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processes-vs-threads.csv
Process Thread
Processes are heavy-weight operations. Threads are lighter-weight operations.
Processes can start new processes using e.g. [fork()](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/fork.2.html) (system call). A process can start several threads using e.g [pthread_create()](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/pthread_create.3.html) (system call).
Each process lives in its own memory (address) space and holds a full copy of the program in memory which consume more memory. Processes don’t share memory with other processes. Threads share memory with other threads of the same process. Threads within the same process live within the same address space and can thus easily access each other's data structures. The shared memory heaps and pools allow for reduced overhead of shared components.
Inter-process communication is slow as processes have different memory addresses. Inter-thread communication can be faster than inter-process communication because threads of the same process share memory with the process they belong to.
Context switching between processes is more expensive. Context switching between threads of the same process is less expensive.
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