When you execute something synchronously, you wait for it to finish before moving on to another task. When you execute something asynchronously, you can move on to another task before it finishes. That being said, in the context of computers this translates into executing a process or task on another 'thread.' A thread is a series of commands (a block of code) that exists as a unit of work. The operating system can manage multiple threads and assign a thread a piece ('slice') of processor time before switching to another thread to give it a turn to do some work. Avg Antivirus For Windows 98 more. At its core (pardon the pun), a processor can simply execute a command, it has no concept of doing two things at one time.

Dec 03, 2007 Actually the primary difference between an asynchronous & synchronous counters is subtle -- both counters use a clock to drive the counter -- digital. Synchronous vs Asynchronous Synchronous and asynchronous are two big words that seem intimidating but are quite simple. Frank Ocean Full Album here. Synchronous simply means that all events.

The operating system simulates this by allocating slices of time to different threads. Now, if you introduce multiple cores/processors into the mix, then things CAN actually happen at the same time.