11.2. Process Life Cycle

Now that we understand the relationship between processes and threads, we can consider the life cycle of a process. In this discussion, I use the term process instead of thread to make the discussions easier to follow. It is assumed that we understand that a thread can go to sleep while the process as a whole is still executing other threads. In this, we could assume that in these examples we are talking about a single thread process, where the state of the thread reflects the state of the entire process.

Figure 11-2 shows us the major states the process can be in. The first thing to note is the names given to the states. These states are actually applied to threads. I used them to make the distinction between a runnable (TSRUN) thread and a running (TSRUNPROC) thread. Here's a brief explanation of the transition between states: