🚀 go-pugleaf

"Michael Powell" <powellmw@comcast.net> wrote:

>This is a common mis-perception. Here is my two cents.
>
>Processes reside on a CPU. 

<cough>

>                           Processes are load-balanced. It just so happens
>that every process has at least one thread running inside it. It also
>happens that each process may contain more than 1 thread.
>
>If what you say is true, then processes would actually be duplicating
>themselves so that they may be load balanced.

Not duplicating themselves - no, that would be wasteful as well as
unnecessary.

When the task scheduler switches which thread is running on a particular
processor, what it does is to load certain registers of that CPU. To
load it onto a different CPU is merely setting the registers of that
other CPU. General memory is shared between the processors - that's the
entire address space used by the process.

Alan Bellingham
-- 
Me <url:mailto:alanb@episys.com> <url:http://www.doughnut.demon.co.uk/>
ACCU - C, C++ and Java programming               <url:http://accu.org/>
The 2004 Discworld Convention                   <url:http://dwcon.org/>