AI engineering glossary · Computing foundations
What is context switch?
Context switch: The operating system's act of pausing one running process or thread, saving its state, and loading another so the CPU can work on it. It enables multitasking but costs some time, so excessive switching reduces efficiency.
Context switch: an example
On a 4-core machine running 100 busy processes, the scheduler constantly context-switches between them.
Related terms
More Computing foundations terms
- Coordinated Universal Time
- CPU core
- CUDA
- Daemon
- Data center
- Data compression
- Deadlock
- Decimal number system
Where you learn it
Context switch is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.