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→Single-threaded vs multithreaded programs: Fixed wording and link. A CPU executes instructions, not commands. Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
m Disambiguating links to Manycore (link changed to Manycore processor) using DisamAssist. |
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Multithreaded applications have the following advantages vs single-threaded ones:
* ''Responsiveness'': multithreading can allow an application to remain responsive to input. In a one-thread program, if the main execution thread blocks on a long-running task, the entire application can appear to freeze. By moving such long-running tasks to a ''worker thread'' that runs concurrently with the main execution thread, it is possible for the application to remain responsive to user input while executing tasks in the background. On the other hand, in most cases multithreading is not the only way to keep a program responsive, with [[non-blocking I/O]] and/or [[Unix signals]] being available for obtaining similar results.<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Sergey |last=Ignatchenko |title=Single-Threading: Back to the Future? |url=http://accu.org/index.php/journals/1634 |journal=[[Overload (magazine)|Overload]] |issue=97 |pages=16–19 |date=August 2010 |publisher=[[ACCU (organisation)|ACCU]]}}</ref>
* ''Parallelization'': applications looking to use multicore or multi-CPU systems can use multithreading to split data and tasks into parallel subtasks and let the underlying architecture manage how the threads run, either concurrently on one core or in parallel on multiple cores. GPU computing environments like [[CUDA]] and [[OpenCL]] use the multithreading model where dozens to hundreds of threads run in [[Data parallelism|parallel across data]] on a [[Manycore processor|large number of cores]]. This, in turn, enables better system utilization, and (provided that synchronization costs don't eat the benefits up), can provide faster program execution.
Multithreaded applications have the following drawbacks:
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