*BSD News Article 57382


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Win32 CreateThread() vs Unix fork()
Date: 19 Dec 1995 22:20:57 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Will Packard <will@nt.com> writes:

> The lack of overhead associated with a thread is the reason to use threads
> instead of separate processes.

I don't think so.  I rather think it's the ability of using a shared
data region between all threads, so for the typical example of
windowing systems, you could continue to draw an image in one thread
while already waiting for new events in the other one.  This is rather
hard to accomplish with distinct processes (but not impossible, e.g.
by extended usage of shared memory between the processes).

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)