Managed Threading

Whether you are developing for computers with one processor or several, you want your application to provide the most responsive interaction with the user, even if the application is currently doing other work. Using multiple threads of execution is one of the most powerful ways to keep your application responsive to the user and at the same time make use of the processor in between or even during user events. While this section introduces the basic concepts of threading, it focuses on managed threading concepts and using managed threading.

Note

Starting with the .NET Framework version 4, multithreaded programming is greatly simplified with the System.Threading.Tasks.Parallel and System.Threading.Tasks.Task classes, Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), new concurrent collection classes in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace, and a new programming model that is based on the concept of tasks rather than threads. For more information, see Parallel Programming in the .NET Framework.

In This Section

• Managed Threading Basics
  Provides an overview of managed threading and discusses when to use multiple threads.

• Using Threads and Threading
  Explains how to create, start, pause, resume, and abort threads.

• Managed Threading Best Practices
  Discusses levels of synchronization, how to avoid deadlocks and race conditions, single-processor and multiprocessor computers, and other threading issues.

• Threading Objects and Features
  Describes the managed classes you can use to synchronize the activities of threads and the data of objects accessed on different threads, and provides an overview of thread pool threads.

Reference

• System.Threading
  Contains classes for using and synchronizing managed threads.

• System.Collections.Concurrent
  Contains collection classes that are safe for use with multiple threads.

• System.Threading.Tasks
  Contains classes for creating and scheduling concurrent processing tasks.

Related Sections

• Application Domains
  Provides an overview of application domains and their use by the Common Language Infrastructure.

• Asynchronous File I/O
  Describes the performance advantages and basic operation of asynchronous I/O.

• Asynchronous Programming Design Patterns
  Provides an overview of asynchronous programming.

• Calling Synchronous Methods Asynchronously
  Explains how to call methods on thread pool threads using built-in features of delegates.

• Parallel Programming in the .NET Framework
  Describes the parallel programming libraries, which simplify the use of multiple threads in applications.

• Parallel LINQ (PLINQ)
  Describes a system for running queries in parallel, to take advantage of multiple processors.