What is Multiprogramming?

Multiprogramming is the capability of am operating system to support multiple applications running concurrently. Multiprogramming simply means that an operating system can run many ( one or more) applications at the same time.

Only one application can actually use a processor at a time, but the multiprogramming operating system is responsible for dividing the processor's execution time and sharing the processor between many applications. In multiprocessor system, the operating system may creatively schedule process to maximize the efficiency of the available CPUs. A term more extensively employed today to describe multiprogramming is multitasking.