IBM developerWorks: Managing processes and threads

"In the previous column we took an initial look at programming sockets and reviewed some performance measurements of the socket code operating completely within a single system. The measurements do not reflect network transmission rates, but they do indicate the maximum possible throughput for sockets. A future column will go into more detail and investigate the delay algorithm and transmission speeds over real network adapters and real networks.

This month's column will show how to create and dispose of processes and threads. Threads and processes are very similar. In fact, in Linux, threads and processes are almost indistinguishable.

...I have talked briefly about processes and threads, and demonstrated the programming of both in a program I wrote. After measuring the performance of process and thread creation, Linux seems to be faster on both counts than either Windows 2000 or Windows XP. You're welcome to download the test script, create-pt2a-sh.sh, and the source code for create-pt2a.cpp (see Resources below) and run it yourself."

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