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Multitasking is a common feature of computer operating systems since at least the 1960s. It allows more efficient use of the computer hardware; when a program is waiting for some external event such as a user input or an input/output transfer with a peripheral to complete, the central processor can still be used with another program.
Even though it is very difficult to further speed up a single thread or single program, most computer systems are actually multitasking among multiple threads or programs. Thus, techniques that improve the throughput of all tasks result in overall performance gains. Two major techniques for throughput computing are multithreading and ...
Multitasking may refer to: Computer multitasking, the concurrent execution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time Cooperative multitasking; Pre-emptive multitasking; Human multitasking, the apparent performance by an individual of handling more than one task at the same time
Bob Bemer used the term time-sharing in his 1957 article "How to consider a computer" in Automatic Control Magazine and it was reported the same year he used the term time-sharing in a presentation. [6] [8] [9] In a paper published in December 1958, W. F. Bauer wrote that "The computers would handle a number of problems concurrently ...
Foreground-background is a scheduling algorithm that is used to control an execution of multiple processes on a single processor. It is based on two waiting lists, the first one is called foreground because this is the one in which all processes initially enter, and the second one is called background because all processes, after using all of their execution time in foreground, are moved to ...
Coarse-grain multithreading is more common for less context switch between threads. For example, Intel's Montecito processor uses coarse-grained multithreading, while Sun's UltraSPARC T1 uses fine-grained multithreading. For those processors that have only one pipeline per core, interleaved multithreading is the only possible way, because it ...
In a multitasking context, it refers to the process of storing the system state for one task, so that task can be paused and another task resumed. A context switch can also occur as the result of an interrupt , such as when a task needs to access disk storage , freeing up CPU time for other tasks.
This type of multitasking is called cooperative because all programs must cooperate for the scheduling scheme to work. In this scheme, the process scheduler of an operating system is known as a cooperative scheduler whose role is limited to starting the processes and letting them return control back to it voluntarily.