Light-weight process

In computer operating systems, a light-weight process (LWP) is a means of achieving multitasking. In the traditional meaning of the term, as used in Unix System V and Solaris, a LWP runs in user space on top of a single kernel thread and shares its address space and system resources with other LWPs within the same process. Multiple user level threads, managed by a thread library, can be placed on top of one or many LWPs - allowing multitasking to be done at the user level, which can have some performance benefits.