Topic 2. Operating system processes and threads: scheduling, priorities, processor affinity; threads and the thread pool in C#

Goal: become familiar with operating system processes and threads, scheduling, priorities, and processor affinity; learn to launch worker processes with the Process class, create, wait for, and correctly stop threads with the Thread class, handle exceptions in threads, and use the thread pool and a timer; master partitioning computations among N threads and measuring speedup and efficiency.

Lecture contents

1. OS processes and threads — A process and its resources · Operating system threads
2. Scheduling and affinity — Thread scheduling and priorities · Processor affinity
3. Processes and the Thread class in .NET — Processes in .NET · The Thread class
4. The thread pool and monitoring — The thread pool · Partitioning a computation among N threads · Thread monitoring tools
5. Examples and common mistakes — Program examples · Common mistakes

Practice and review

• Practice — 3 worked examples with complete code and output
• Tasks — 30 variants, each with tasks at three difficulty levels
• Summary — conclusions, self-check questions, and useful links