Re: question about tasks, multithreading and multi-cpu machines

[Jeffrey Creem <jeff@thecreems.com>]

Norbert Caspari wrote:
> In Ada it is possible to declare multiple parallel running "tasks". But for 
> my opinion the keyword "task" is somewhat misleding because in fact, those 
> "tasks" are really threads.


Others answered the real question but I'll comment on this. Actually, 
threads is misleading since threads are just tasks minus rendevous. It 
all just depends on your perspective. Since Ada had tasking before 
(most) unix had threads I think Unix got the name wrong :)

Also, under vxWorks things you think of as threads are called tasks and 
Ada tasks are layered on top of them.

So, the only thing I am trying to say here is that people seem to assume 
that task, thread and process have some formal definition that is all 
powerful. This is not true.