Ex Parte 5694604 et al - Page 43


                Appeal 2007-2127                                                                                  
                Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621                                                              
                DosCreateThread call."); Petzold, Programming the OS/2 Presentation                               
                Manager, page 786 ("A process running under OS/2 consists of one or more                          
                threads of execution.  Each thread has a thread ID number that uniquely                           
                identifies the thread within the process.  The thread that begins execution in                    
                the process always has an ID number of 1.  A thread can create additional                         
                threads in the process by a call to DosCreateThread.").  The special                              
                instruction is the mechanism the program uses to inform the operating                             
                system to create the necessary data structures for another thread.                                

                                    o. Asynchronous execution of threads                                          
                       "Threads execute independently of one another; they are said to be                         
                asynchronous, meaning that they run simultaneously but without timing                             
                relationships.  (That is, when a thread is executing a particular instruction, it                 
                cannot be predicted what instruction any other thread is currently                                
                executing.)"  Young, Programmer's Guide to OS/2, page 178.  It is possible                        
                to make threads execute synchronously using special instructions.                                 

                                    p. A simple multithreading example                                            
                       The following is a simple example of a multithreading program from                         
                LaFore, Peter Norton's Inside OS/2, page 135.  The first thread starts another                    
                using the DosCreateThread function (annotations at the right have been                            
                added).  The first thread then prints a series of Xs during its timeslice, while                  
                the second thread prints a series of dashes during its timeslice.                                 
                                                                                                                 




                                                       43                                                         

Page:  Previous  36  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  44  45  46  47  48  49  50  Next

Last modified: September 9, 2013