Multithreading Models

  1. Many-To-One (N:1) Model: A process with N threads will map to a single kernel process.
    • It is also known as user-level threading since the implementation of the threads is user-program-dependent.
    • Thread management is handled by the thread library in the user space, which is very efficient.
    • The problem is that, when one of the user threads blocks, the other threads block as well since they all depend on a single kernel thread. In addition, due to the single kernel thread, which can run on only 1 CPU, threads can’t run in true parallelism.
Many-to-one multithreading model.

Many-to-one multithreading model. Taken from Bell, John T. "Threads." University of Illinois, Chicago.

These notes by Miriam Briskman are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 and based on sources.