The PN domain creates a separate thread of execution for each node in the program graph. Threads are sometimes called lightweight processes. Modern operating systems, such as Unix, support the simultaneous execution of multiple processes. There need not be any actual parallelism. The operating system can interleave the execution of the processes. Within a single process, there can be multiple lightweight processes or threads, so there are two levels of multi-threading. Threads share a single address space, that of the parent process, allowing them to communicate through simple variables (shared memory). There is no need for more complex, heavyweight inter-process communication mechanisms such as pipes.
Synchronization mechanisms are available to ensure that threads have exclusive access to shared data and cannot interfere with one another to corrupt shared data structures. Monitors and condition variables are available to synchronize the execution of threads. A monitor is an object that can be locked and unlocked. Only one thread may hold the lock on the monitor. If a thread attempts to lock a monitor that is already locked by another thread, then it will be suspended until the monitor is unlocked. At that point, it wakes up and tries again to lock the monitor. Condition variables allow threads to send signals to each other. Condition variables must be used in conjunction with a monitor; a thread must lock the associated monitor before using a condition variable.
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