Internal

Subjects

On a Linux system, each JVM thread counts as a "process", in that it is subject to system-wide and user-wide process number limitations (see "maximum number of processes allowed on a system" and "maximum number of processes available to a single user"). When a JVM instance adjust its number of threads, the change is reflected by /proc/stat "processes" count.

For an example of what happens when the number of Linux processes allowed to an user is reached, see

OutOfMemoryError "unable to create new native thread"

A simple Java program that allows experimenting with threads:

https://github.com/NovaOrdis/playground/tree/master/java/threads/multiple-threads-spinning