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A Process is an instance of a computer program, containing the program code being or about to be executed and its data in memory. A process owns ressources such one or more processors if running, and memory, including descriptors of allocated resources, such as file descriptors or handles for data sources and sinks, usually all provided by the operating system. Multitasking operating systems allow the simultaneous execution of multiple threads within one process, sharing all its common resources. Further, processes may spawn or fork child processes who inherit most of the attributes from its parent, such as open files, but otherwise have their own memory for data, heap and stack.

Process States

Seven process states in a State diagram ^[1]

Parallel Search

In Parallel search, multiple threads within one process are more common, because they are easier to debug as well as implement, provided the program does not already have lots of global variables. Processes are favored by some because the need to explicitly share memory makes subtle bugs easier to avoid. Also, in processes, the extra argument to most functions is not needed.