Classes

Create a descendant of TThread to represent an execution thread in a multi-threaded application. Each new instance of a TThread descendant is a new thread of execution. Multiple instances of a TThread derived class make an application multi-threaded.  

When an application is run, it is loaded into memory ready for execution. At this point it becomes a process containing one or more threads that contain the data, code and other system resources for the program. A thread executes one part of an application and is allocated CPU time by the operating system. All threads of a process share the same address space and can access the process's global variables. 

Use threads to improve application performance by

• Managing input from several communication devices.
• Distinguishing among tasks of varying priority. For example, a high priority thread handles time critical tasks, and a low priority thread performs other tasks.

Following are issues and recommendations to be aware of when using threads:

• Keeping track of too many threads consumes CPU time; the recommended limit is 16 active threads per process on single processor systems.
• When multiple threads update the same resources, they must be synchronized to avoid conflicts.
• Most methods that access an object and update a form must only be called from within the main thread or use a synchronization object such as TMultiReadExclusiveWriteSynchronizer.

Define the thread object's Execute method by inserting the code that should execute when the thread is executed.

TCriticalSection 

TEvent 

TThreadList 

TMultiReadExclusiveWriteSynchronizer 

Service Threads 

Defining Thread Objects