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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