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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers difference between task and process Post 12249 by Perderabo on Saturday 22nd of December 2001 04:00:54 PM
Old 12-22-2001
I have gone deep into my archives to further research this question. The earliest book that I could find that uses all three terms is Operating Systems by Harry Katzan Jr published in (I'm dating myself here) 1973. The book heavily focuses on IBM operating systems since IBM dominated the market in those days.

First, the word "process" does not even get an entry in the index. Where we would use "process", this book uses "task".

In Chapter 5 Evolutionary Development of Operating System Technology, we learn that IBM first broke the "one program at a time" mold when it introduced SPOOL. You will love this quote...
Quote:
The term Spooling was derived from the acronym SPOOL (Simultaneous Peripheral Output On Line) which obviously refers to the process of computing and doing output concurrently.
But anyway Spooling was the first example of multiprogramming. The computer could run one user written task and it did something else. But the "else" was limited to spooling and few other os supplied utility programs.

Multitasking was the next step where the OS could actually run two or more user written tasks at once.

And multiprocessing is indeed two or more cpu's in one system. I too used to use multiprocessing to mean multiple processes, but I stopped when real multi-processors came along. It's kinda like the way the terms "microcode" and "firmware" got carelessly used.
 

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TASKSET(1)							   User Commands							TASKSET(1)

NAME
taskset - set or retrieve a process's CPU affinity SYNOPSIS
taskset [options] mask command [argument...] taskset [options] -p [mask] pid DESCRIPTION
taskset is used to set or retrieve the CPU affinity of a running process given its pid, or to launch a new command with a given CPU affin- ity. CPU affinity is a scheduler property that "bonds" a process to a given set of CPUs on the system. The Linux scheduler will honor the given CPU affinity and the process will not run on any other CPUs. Note that the Linux scheduler also supports natural CPU affinity: the scheduler attempts to keep processes on the same CPU as long as practical for performance reasons. Therefore, forcing a specific CPU affinity is useful only in certain applications. The CPU affinity is represented as a bitmask, with the lowest order bit corresponding to the first logical CPU and the highest order bit corresponding to the last logical CPU. Not all CPUs may exist on a given system but a mask may specify more CPUs than are present. A retrieved mask will reflect only the bits that correspond to CPUs physically on the system. If an invalid mask is given (i.e., one that corresponds to no valid CPUs on the current system) an error is returned. The masks may be specified in hexadecimal (with or without a leading "0x"), or as a CPU list with the --cpu-list option. For example, 0x00000001 is processor #0, 0x00000003 is processors #0 and #1, 0xFFFFFFFF is processors #0 through #31, 32 is processors #1, #4, and #5, --cpu-list 0-2,6 is processors #0, #1, #2, and #6. When taskset returns, it is guaranteed that the given program has been scheduled to a legal CPU. OPTIONS
-a, --all-tasks Set or retrieve the CPU affinity of all the tasks (threads) for a given PID. -c, --cpu-list Interpret mask as numerical list of processors instead of a bitmask. Numbers are separated by commas and may include ranges. For example: 0,5,8-11. -p, --pid Operate on an existing PID and do not launch a new task. -V, --version Display version information and exit. -h, --help Display help text and exit. USAGE
The default behavior is to run a new command with a given affinity mask: taskset mask command [arguments] You can also retrieve the CPU affinity of an existing task: taskset -p pid Or set it: taskset -p mask pid PERMISSIONS
A user can change the CPU affinity of a process belonging to the same user. A user must possess CAP_SYS_NICE to change the CPU affinity of a process belonging to another user. A user can retrieve the affinity mask of any process. SEE ALSO
chrt(1), nice(1), renice(1), sched_getaffinity(2), sched_setaffinity(2) See sched(7) for a description of the Linux scheduling scheme. AUTHOR
Written by Robert M. Love. COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2004 Robert M. Love. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MER- CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. AVAILABILITY
The taskset command is part of the util-linux package and is available from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/. util-linux August 2014 TASKSET(1)
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