This routine notifies the thread scheduler that the current thread is willing to release its processor to other threads of equivalent or greater scheduling precedence. (A thread generally will release its processor to a thread of a greater scheduling precedence without calling this routine.) If no other threads of equivalent or greater scheduling precedence are ready to execute, the thread continues. This routine can allow knowledge of the details of an application to be used to improve its performance. If a thread does not call pthread_yield_np(), other threads may be given the opportunity to run at arbitrary points (possibly even when the interrupted thread holds a required resource). By making strategic calls to pthread_yield_np(), other threads can be given the opportunity to run when the resources are free. This improves performance by reducing contention for the resource. As a general guideline, consider calling this routine after a thread has released a resource (such as a mutex) which is heavily contended for by other threads. This can be especially important either if the program is running on a uniprocessor machine, or if the thread acquires and releases the resource inside a tight loop. Use this routine carefully and sparingly, because misuse can cause unnecessary context switching which will increase overhead and actually degrade performance. For example, it is counter- productive for a thread to yield while it holds a resource that the threads to which it is yielding will need. Likewise, it is pointless to yield unless there is likely to be another thread that is ready to run. NOTE pthread_yield_np() is equivalent to sched_yield(). Use sched_yield() since it is part of the standard portable POSIX Threads Library.