Working with threads

A thread is a sequence of instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, such as the operating system. Threads could be software or hardware. Software threads are threads of execution that are managed by the operating system. They can run on single processing units, usually by time slicing. This is a mechanism where each thread gets a time slot of execution (in the range of milliseconds) on the processing unit before the operating system schedules another software thread to run on the same processing unit. Hardware threads are threads of execution at the physical level. They are, basically, a CPU or a CPU core. They can run simultaneously, that is, in parallel, on systems with multiprocessors or multicores. Many software threads can run concurrently on a hardware thread, usually by using time slicing. The C++ library provides support for working with software threads. In this recipe, you will learn how to create and perform other operations...