Question
A thread is usually defined as a "light weight process" because an operating system (OS) maintains smaller data structures for a thread than for a process. In relation to this, which of the following is TRUE?
Official answer and solution
- Official answer
- C
- From
- Official GATE 2011 answer key
Solution
Identify the resource-sharing model of threads versus processes in modern operating systems.
- A process is the unit of resource allocation and ownership, possessing its own virtual address space, page tables, file descriptors, and IPC channels.
- Threads within the same process represent units of CPU execution that share the process address space (code, global data, heap). The operating system does NOT maintain independent virtual memory state or distinct page tables per thread.
- Each thread has its own private execution context: thread ID, CPU register set (including program counter), scheduling priority, and its own private user/kernel stack.
- Hence, statement C ("On per-thread basis, the OS does not maintain virtual memory state") is TRUE.
Final answer
C
The answer is the one in the official GATE answer key. The solution is this site's own explanation.
Source
- Paper
- GATE 2011 Computer Science and Information Technology (CS)
- Question
- 16 of 65, printed as CS Q.16
- Section
- Computer Science and Information Technology
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