What is the difference between a process and a thread?

Question

What is the technical difference between a process and a thread?

I get the feeling a word like \'process\' is overused and there are also hardware and software threa

Answer 1

Process:

1. Process is a heavy weight process.
2. Process is a separate program that has separate memory,data,resources ect.
3. Process are created using fork() method.
4. Context switch between the process is time consuming.
   

Example:
Say, opening any browser (mozilla, Chrome, IE). At this point new process will start to execute.

Threads:

1. Threads are light weight processes.Threads are bundled inside the process.
2. Threads have a shared memory,data,resources,files etc.
3. Threads are created using clone() method.
4. Context switch between the threads are not much time consuming as Process.
   

Example:
Opening multiple tabs in the browser.