CPU threads question

[Watashi]

What exactly do CPU threads do? can someone send me a video on this, orrr give me an explanation on what they do?

[Bit_Guardian]

In terms of hyperthreading where CPU cores can handle 2 or more threads simultaneously, or at the OS level where individual processes run on threads and magically switch in and out?

[spenser_l]

From the man himself:

 

 

[sadface]

They allow your cpu to handle more parallel workloads. Most times threads=cores unless hyperthreaded then it 2x the number of cores. More threads allow for faster editing of videos, encoding music, unzipping compressed files, medical research, etc.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

This is a really dumbed down explanation. Fellow Computing Science students are going to roast me on this...  but a thread is basically a task that processed by a processing core. If your program supports multiple threads, each thread uses another available core. So if you have a program that checks for prime numbers, if it's not multithreaded, you'll have to wait for first number to finish in order to check the second one. With multithreaded programming, you can effectively have different threads check for prime numbers at the same time. It's much more complicated than this, but for an average consumer, you can look at it this way.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

@Doomerson of course that's what's going on in theory. Multi-threaded programming is a lot more complicated because ...well I'll let these cute puppies explain the problem.

[SCHISCHKA]

i think its better to understand what a computer is. A computer is a machine either electronic, human, or mechanical that takes two inputs:

1. instruction or program

2. data

#1 tells the machine (CPU) what to do with #2.

one thread is one instruction input, two threads allows for two instruction inputs, etc.

 

here is some further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computing)

I like to mention human computers because its easier on the imagination. Not many people realise that the first computers were not powered by electricity or valves but by actual french men that ran on baguettes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

Heres a more mathematical description of modern computing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine