

Why Does Win32 Even Have Fibers? - neilc
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/01/05/347314.aspx

======
a-priori
So am I right that "fiber" is just the Microsoft word for "green thread"?

~~~
pmorici
A more direct parallel is a posix thread with it's scope set to
PTHREAD_SCOPE_PROCESS. Solaris has something called a "light weight process"
which is also the same thing. A green thread is a thread running within a
virtual machine.

This article is also slightly inaccurate in saying that you CAN'T call API
calls that block from a fiber. You can make the calls but it will block all of
your fibers / process level threads which may not be what you want.

"fiber" is just Microsoft's marketing term for threads scheduled at the
process level.

~~~
neilc
Well, "fiber" is just the API's name for a user thread. Calling it a
"marketing term" seems unfair -- it is just a piece of technical jargon.

~~~
pmorici
If it's just an API term then why don't they just call it a "user thread"?
Microsoft calls other wise standard things by different names to make people
who don't know any better think that their skill only applys to Microsoft
products.

ie: Microsoft calls their implementation of a LDAP server "Active Directory"
even though they are essentially the same thing.

It's not a question of fairness it's a question of facts. You're the one
reading it with a negative connotation that implies unfairness.

~~~
neilc
_If it's just an API term then why don't they just call it a "user thread"?_

Because that might be confused with other user thread implementations? It is
also significantly more awkward than "fiber".

 _Microsoft calls their implementation of a LDAP server "Active Directory"
even though they are essentially the same thing._

Not really; AD does a lot more than just LDAP (e.g. Kerberos, DNS).

------
trezor
Ok. So I'm a SQL Server DBA and I've heard about fibers before (with regard to
SQL Server configuration), but not to any great extent as far as technical
details go.

A interesting read.

