Using Fewer System Resources

Programs that use two or more processes that access common data through shared memory are applying more than one thread of control.

However, each process has a full address space and operating environment state. Cost of creating and maintaining this large amount of state information makes each process much more expensive than a thread in both time and space.

In addition, the inherent separation between processes can require a major effort by the programmer. This effort includes handling communication between the threads in different processes, or synchronizing their actions. When the threads are in the same process, communication and synchronization becomes much easier.