{"id":54308,"date":"2011-08-12T06:38:10","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T06:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/?post_type=definition&#038;p=54308"},"modified":"2014-09-23T06:45:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T06:45:08","slug":"thread-2","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/27857\/thread-operating-systems","title":{"rendered":"Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_thread_mean\">What Does Thread Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>A thread is the smallest unit of processing that can be performed in an OS. In most modern operating systems, a thread exists within a process &#8211; that is, a single process may contain multiple threads.<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_thread\">Techopedia Explains Thread<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>You can imagine multitasking as something that allows processes to run concurrently, while multithreading allows sub-processes to run concurrently.<\/p>\n<p>When multiple threads are running concurrently, this is known as multithreading, which is similar to multitasking. Basically, an operating system with multitasking capabilities allows programs (or processes) to run seemingly at the same time. On the other hand, a single program with multithreading capabilities allows individual sub-processes (or threads) to run seemingly at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>One example of multithreading is downloading a video while playing it at the same time. Multithreading is also used extensively in computer-generated animation.<\/p>\n<p>Among the widely-used programming languages that allow developers to work on threads in their program source code are Java, Python and .NET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Thread Mean? A thread is the smallest unit of processing that can be performed in an OS. In most modern operating systems, a thread exists within a process &#8211; that is, a single process may contain multiple threads. Techopedia Explains Thread You can imagine multitasking as something that allows processes to run concurrently, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"definitioncat":[216],"class_list":["post-54308","definition","type-definition","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","definitioncat-software-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.2 (Yoast SEO v24.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is a Thread in an Operating System? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is a Thread in an Operating System? - Definition from Techopedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thread\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is a Thread in an Operating System? 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