[the8472]

There is this concept called "threads" which can be found in most operating systems.

[Roboprog]

Process, thread, task, whatever.

(I so remember the first time I was reading about threads in OS/2 and Novell back in 1989 or 90 - no risk not worth taking to squeeze a little bit more out of 10 MHz CPUs with OS's with crummy process management, I guess)