如果你的程序使用线程(并发编程)，它不一定会这样执行(并行执行)，因为这取决于机器是否可以处理几个线程。

这是一个直观的例子。非线程机器上的线程:

        --  --  --
     /              \
>---- --  --  --  -- ---->>

螺纹机上的螺纹:

     ------
    /      \
>-------------->>

虚线表示执行的代码。正如您所看到的，它们都分开并分别执行，但是线程机器可以同时执行几个单独的部分。

并发性和并行性源

在单个处理器上的多线程进程中，处理器可以在线程之间切换执行资源，从而实现并发执行。

在共享内存多处理器环境中的同一个多线程进程中，进程中的每个线程可以同时在单独的处理器上运行，从而导致并行执行。

当进程的线程数量与处理器数量相同或较少时，线程支持系统结合操作环境确保每个线程运行在不同的处理器上。

例如，在具有相同数量的线程和处理器的矩阵乘法中，每个线程(和每个处理器)计算结果的一行。

我认为并发编程指的是多线程编程，它是关于让你的程序运行多个线程，从硬件细节中抽象出来。

并行编程是指专门设计程序算法以利用可用的并行执行。例如，您可以并行执行某些算法的两个分支，期望它会比先检查第一个分支再检查第二个分支更快地到达结果(平均而言)。

并行编程发生在代码同时被执行并且每次执行都是相互独立的时候。因此，通常不会有关于共享变量之类的关注，因为那不太可能发生。

However, concurrent programming consists on code being executed by different processes/threads that share variables and such, therefore on concurrent programming we must establish some sort of rule to decide which process/thread executes first, we want this so that we can be sure there will be consistency and that we can know with certainty what will happen. If there is no control and all threads compute at the same time and store things on the same variables, how would we know what to expect in the end? Maybe a thread is faster than the other, maybe one of the threads even stopped in the middle of its execution and another continued a different computation with a corrupted (not yet fully computed) variable, the possibilities are endless. It's in these situations that we usually use concurrent programming instead of parallel.

不同的人在许多不同的具体情况下讨论不同类型的并发性和并行性，因此需要一些抽象来涵盖它们的共同性质。

The basic abstraction is done in computer science, where both concurrency and parallelism are attributed to the properties of programs. Here, programs are formalized descriptions of computing. Such programs need not to be in any particular language or encoding, which is implementation-specific. The existence of API/ABI/ISA/OS is irrelevant to such level of abstraction. Surely one will need more detailed implementation-specific knowledge (like threading model) to do concrete programming works, the spirit behind the basic abstraction is not changed.

第二个重要的事实是，作为一般属性，并发性和并行性可以在许多不同的抽象中共存。

关于一般的区别，请参阅并发和并行的基本观点的相关答案。(还有一些链接包含一些其他来源。)

并发编程和并行编程是用一些系统实现这些一般属性的技术，这些系统公开了可编程性。系统通常是编程语言及其实现。

A programming language may expose the intended properties by built-in semantic rules. In most cases, such rules specify the evaluations of specific language structures (e.g. expressions) making the computation involved effectively concurrent or parallel. (More specifically, the computational effects implied by the evaluations can perfectly reflect these properties.) However, concurrent/parallel language semantics are essentially complex and they are not necessary to practical works (to implement efficient concurrent/parallel algorithms as the solutions of realistic problems). So, most traditional languages take a more conservative and simpler approach: assuming the semantics of evaluation totally sequential and serial, then providing optional primitives to allow some of the computations being concurrent and parallel. These primitives can be keywords or procedural constructs ("functions") supported by the language. They are implemented based on the interaction with hosted environments (OS, or "bare metal" hardware interface), usually opaque (not able to be derived using the language portably) to the language. Thus, in this particular kind of high-level abstractions seen by the programmers, nothing is concurrent/parallel besides these "magic" primitives and programs relying on these primitives; the programmers can then enjoy less error-prone experience of programming when concurrency/parallelism properties are not so interested.

Although primitives abstract the complex away in the most high-level abstractions, the implementations still have the extra complexity not exposed by the language feature. So, some mid-level abstractions are needed. One typical example is threading. Threading allows one or more thread of execution (or simply thread; sometimes it is also called a process, which is not necessarily the concept of a task scheduled in an OS) supported by the language implementation (the runtime). Threads are usually preemptively scheduled by the runtime, so a thread needs to know nothing about other threads. Thus, threads are natural to implement parallelism as long as they share nothing (the critical resources): just decompose computations in different threads, once the underlying implementation allows the overlapping of the computation resources during the execution, it works. Threads are also subject to concurrent accesses of shared resources: just access resources in any order meets the minimal constraints required by the algorithm, and the implementation will eventually determine when to access. In such cases, some synchronization operations may be necessary. Some languages treat threading and synchronization operations as parts of the high-level abstraction and expose them as primitives, while some other languages encourage only relatively more high-level primitives (like futures/promises) instead.

Under the level of language-specific threads, there come multitasking of the underlying hosting environment (typically, an OS). OS-level preemptive multitasking are used to implement (preemptive) multithreading. In some environments like Windows NT, the basic scheduling units (the tasks) are also "threads". To differentiate them with userspace implementation of threads mentioned above, they are called kernel threads, where "kernel" means the kernel of the OS (however, strictly speaking, this is not quite true for Windows NT; the "real" kernel is the NT executive). Kernel threads are not always 1:1 mapped to the userspace threads, although 1:1 mapping often reduces most overhead of mapping. Since kernel threads are heavyweight (involving system calls) to create/destroy/communicate, there are non 1:1 green threads in the userspace to overcome the overhead problems at the cost of the mapping overhead. The choice of mapping depending on the programming paradigm expected in the high-level abstraction. For example, when a huge number of userspace threads expected being concurrently executed (like Erlang), 1:1 mapping is never feasible.

The underlying of OS multitasking is ISA-level multitasking provided by the logical core of the processor. This is usually the most low-level public interface for programmers. Beneath this level, there may exist SMT. This is a form of more low-level multithreading implemented by the hardware, but arguably, still somewhat programmable - though it is usually only accessible by the processor manufacturer. Note the hardware design is apparently reflecting parallelism, but there is also concurrent scheduling mechanism to make the internal hardware resources being efficiently used.

在上面提到的每一层“线程”中，都涉及并发性和并行性。尽管编程接口变化很大，但它们都服从于一开始基本抽象所揭示的属性。

并发编程在一般意义上是指我们定义的任务可以以任何顺序发生的环境。一个 任务可以发生在另一个任务之前或之后，并且部分或所有任务可以 同时进行的。 并行编程是特指在不同的处理器上同时执行并发任务。因此,所有 并行编程是并发的，但不是所有的并发编程 是平行的。

来源:PThreads Programming -一个更好的多处理POSIX标准，Buttlar, Farrell, Nichols