Question

You have three applications running on a single-core single-processor system that supports multitasking. One of those applications is a word processing program that is managing two threads simultaneously. The other two applications are using only one thread of execution. How many application threads are running on the processor at any given time?

A. 3
B. 2
C. 4
D. 1

Answer 1

On a single-core processor, only one application thread can run at any given time, no matter how many threads are present in total.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question asks about the number of threads running on a single-core single-processor system that supports multitasking. The system has three applications running: one application with two threads and the other two applications with one thread each. Despite the system's ability to support multitasking, it's a single-core processor, which means that only one thread can be executed at a time.

Therefore, at any given moment, there is only one application thread running on the processor. This is due to the nature of a single-core processor which can only process one thread at a time, switching between threads quickly to give the illusion of parallel processing.