Thread Performance: Resource Contention Concurrency Profiling in Visual Studio 2010

Does your native code deals with critical sections or other synchronization primitives?

Does your managed code uses C# lock statement or Monitor class?

If yes, and if you would like to get a clear picture of all contentions in your application, you might want to check out the new profiling mode of VS2010 Profiler – Resource Contention concurrency profiling. It collects and presents information about all contentions, when synchronization resources cause your threads to be blocked in an attempt to acquire the resource.  Being contended, a thread doesn’t run. It waits. It wastes the time. It decreases the performance you wanted to gain from your super powerful multi-core machine, when you designed your application as a multithreaded in the first place.

For detailed explanation about how to collect contentions data, and what are the best ways to investigate it, follow the links.

1. Resource Contention Concurrency Profiling in Visual Studio 2010 – June 2010 MSDN article
2. Resource Contention Concurrency Profiling in Visual Studio 2010 – Performance Investigation Flows – a follow up blog to the MSDN article.

Resolve synchronization issues, if your code has any, and boost the performance of your application!