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Task (computing)

In computing, a task is a unit of execution or a unit of work. The term is ambiguous; precise alternative terms include process, light-weight process, thread (for execution), step, request, or query (for work). In the adjacent diagram, there are queues of incoming work to do and outgoing completed work, and a thread pool of threads to perform this work. Either the work units themselves or the threads that perform the work can be referred to as "tasks", and these can be referred to respectively as requests/responses/threads, incoming tasks/completed tasks/threads (as illustrated), or requests/responses/tasks.

A unit of work representing one of the steps in a process.

A unit of work to be accomplished by a device or process.

A process and the procedures that run the process.

A set of actions designed to achieve a particular result. A task is performed on a set of targets on a specific schedule.

A unit of computation. In a parallel job, two or more concurrent tasks work together through message passing and shared memory. Although it is common to allocate one task per physical or logical processor, the terms "task" and "processor" are not interchangeable.

An activity that has business value, is initiated by a user, and is performed by software.

Task parallelism

Task queue