A lightweight thread is a computer program process, normally a user thread, that can share address space and resources with other threads, reducing context switching time during execution.
Threads are typically compared in terms of processing time. For example, a lightweight thread is a thread that takes less processing time, whereas a heavyweight thread is a thread that requires more processing time. Thread processing time is also contingent on the language used for thread implementation. For example, it may be more efficient to use C# to implement a program containing multiple threads. Modern operating systems, like Mac, allow for more than a single thread in the same address space, reducing switching time between threads. However, this does not make use of multithreading benefits.
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