A context switch is the computing process of storing and restoring the state (context) of a CPU such that multiple processes can share a single CPU resource. The context switch is an essential feature of a multitasking operating system. Context switches are usually computationally intensive and much of the design of operating systems is to optimize the use of context switches. A context switch can mean a register context switch, a task context switch, a thread context switch, or a process context switch. What constitutes the context is determined by the processor and the operating system. Switching from one process to another requires a certain amount of time for doing the administration - saving and loading registers and memory maps, updating various tables and list etc.

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