Threading

The art of Operating systems ripping running processes into much smaller strings to be delt with by the cpu.

wikipedia http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=187&cw_xml=details.php

A simple threading example in Java shows how it cycles through threads

//: c13:SimpleThread.java
// Very simple Threading example.
// From 'Thinking in Java, 3rd ed.' (c) Bruce Eckel 2002
// www.BruceEckel.com. See copyright notice in CopyRight.txt.

public class SimpleThread extends Thread {
  private int countDown = 5;
  private static int threadCount = 0;
  public SimpleThread() {
    super("" + ++threadCount); // Store the thread name
    start();
  }
  public String toString() {
    return "#" + getName() + ": " + countDown;
  }
  public void run() {
    while(true) {
      System.out.println(this);
      if(--countDown == 0) return;
    }
  }
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
      new SimpleThread();
  }
} ///:~