Difference between multitasking, multithreading and multiprocessing?

multithreading operating-system multiprocessing multitasking
Jaison Varghese picture Jaison Varghese · May 16, 2011 · Viewed 211k times · Source

Whats the difference between multitasking, multiprogramming & multiprocessing

This comes regularly for my university OS exams and I can't find a good answer. I know quite a bit about multitasking and multiprogramming, but need to confirm it.

Answer

Casey Patton picture Casey Patton · May 16, 2011

Paraphrasing wikipedia:

Multiprogramming - A computer running more than one program at a time (like running Excel and Firefox simultaneously) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprogramming

Multiprocessing - A computer using more than one CPU at a time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprocessing

Multitasking - Tasks sharing a common resource (like 1 CPU) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Multithreading

  • Thus, something like multithreading is an extension of multitasking.

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