Threads in Operating System
A thread is a single sequential flow of execution of tasks of a process so it is also known as thread of
execution or thread of control. There is a way of thread execution inside the process of any
operating system. Apart from this, there can be more than one thread inside a process. Each thread
of the same process makes use of a separate program counter and a stack of activation records and
control blocks. Thread is often referred to as a lightweight process.
The process can be split down into so many threads. For example, in a browser, many tabs can be
viewed as threads. MS Word uses many threads - formatting text from one thread, processing input
from another thread, etc.
Need of Thread:
It takes far less time to create a new thread in an existing process than to create a new process.
Threads can share the common data; they do not need to use Inter- Process communication.
Context switching is faster when working with threads.
It takes less time to terminate a thread than a process.
Types of Threads
In the operating system, there are two types of threads.
1.Kernel level thread
2.User-level thread.
User-level thread
The operating system
does not recognize the user-level thread. User threads can be easily implemented and it is
implemented by the user. If a user performs a user-level thread blocking operation, the whole
process is blocked. The kernel level thread does not know nothing about the user level thread. The
kernel-level thread manages user-level threads as if they are single-threaded processes?examples:
Java
thread, POSIX threads, etc.
Advantages of User-level threads
The user threads can be easily implemented than the kernel thread.
User-level threads can be applied to such types of operating systems that do not support threads at
the kernel-level.
It is faster and efficient.
Context switch time is shorter than the kernel-level threads.
It does not require modifications of the operating system.
User-level threads representation is very simple. The register, PC, stack, and mini thread control
blocks are stored in the address space of the user-level process.
It is simple to create, switch, and synchronize threads without the intervention of the process.
Disadvantages of User-level threads
User-level threads lack coordination between the thread and the kernel.
If a thread causes a page fault, the entire process is blocked.
Kernel level thread
The kernel thread recognizes the operating system. There is a thread control block and process
control block in the system for each thread and process in the kernel-level thread. The kernel-level
thread is implemented by the operating system. The kernel knows about all the threads and
manages them. The kernel-level thread offers a system call to create and manage the threads from
user-space. The implementation of kernel threads is more difficult than the user thread. Context
switch time is longer in the kernel thread. If a kernel thread performs a blocking operation, the
Banky thread execution can continue. Example: Window Solaris.
Advantages of Kernel-level threads
The kernel-level thread is fully aware of all threads.
The scheduler may decide to spend more CPU time in the process of threads being large numerical.
The kernel-level thread is good for those applications that block the frequency.
Disadvantages of Kernel-level threads
The kernel thread manages and schedules all threads.
The implementation of kernel threads is difficult than the user thread.
The kernel-level thread is slower than user-level threads
