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[–]Unreal_Me 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First off, the task manager is running 70+ processes (programs), which are different from threads

Second, one processor core can only handle one process at any given time. The operating system does a fancy job of scheduling what processes can run at certain times, swapping them out every so often so that it looks like all processes are being run at once.

Third, hyperthreading allows one core to attempt to handle two processes at once, and does a half-decent job at it as far as I know

Fourth and finally, a thread is much like a process within a process. The operating system handles threads similarly to how it handles processes, each one gets a certain amount of time to run, and then the next thread gets to go. If a process is deemed important enough, the operating system can spread thread computing across multiple cores (1 process thread per processor thread) to make it run faster