Microsoft® Visual J#™ .NET (Core Reference)

Chapter 8. Multithreading with .NET

A thread is the unit of execution that the operating system uses to run an application. Every application running under Microsoft Windows requires at least one thread. Since its earliest days, the Win32 platform has supported multithreading, which allows multiple concurrent paths of execution through a process. The major benefit of using multiple threads in applications has been better performance, both perceived and real. Perceived performance can be enhanced, for example, by ensuring that a distinct thread handles the processing for user interactions in a GUI application. This user interaction thread can run at a slightly higher priority while background tasks are performed on lower-priority threads. This ...