Why do I have multiple copies of programs running?

When I look at the programs that are running, I see a number that have multiple copies running. For example:
8 Avast
4 HD Audio background process
8 Nvidia container
9 runtime broker
7 steam client web helper
plus a number of others that appear two to 4 times.
None of them seem to be doing much, but I just wonder why they are there.
Can anyone shed some light on why this is happening? And whether or not I should just ignore it?

Dale

WIN10 Pro

pepanee said:

Yes, Bree is correct. I only have a few tabs open in Google Chrome, yet look at how many processes it's running:

Just look at the built in Task Manager in Chrome and it will tell you what each process is for.

Thanks all. I was just a little worried that the extra processes might be consuming extra resources -- but will now ignore them.

If your system is running fine, just ignore it.

Applications use multiple processes for a variety of reasons, some of which can be quite technical. Browsers generally use them for stability. If the browser only had one process and there was a problem with one tab it could take down the browser including all tabs. Very inconvenient if there are many tabs. With multiple processes usually only the one tab will be effected. Google Chrome was early to adopt this and now most browsers work this way.

The downside to multiple processes is more resource usage. But it is considered that on a reasonably modern system the benefits are worth the cost. The decision to use multiple processes is made by the developer. The user typically has no control over this.

Modern operating systems are very complex so we can't expect there will be a simple explanation for everything. Very often there won't be.