Code Library

If you want to take advantage of the power of multi-core machines, you need to start creating applications with parallel processing using PLINQ, the Task Parallel Library and the new features of Visual Studio 2010.

The old rule was, if you wanted to create a program with bugs that you could never hope to track down, you wrote it as a multithreaded application. All that has changed, thanks to the introduction of Microsoft Parallel Extensions for .NET, which provides a layer of abstraction on top of the Microsoft .NET Framework threading model.

Parallel Extensions follows the model Microsoft established with the transaction manager in COM applications and with the Entity Framework and LINQ in the area of data access. Parallel Extensions attempts to bring a sophisticated technology to the masses by building high-level support for a complex process into the .NET Framework. With multi-core processors becoming the norm, developers crave the ability to distribute their applications over all the cores on a computer.

You can access the power of Parallel Extensions either through Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) or through the Task Parallel Library (TPL). Both allow you to write one set of code for single- and multi-core computers and count on the .NET Framework to take maximum advantage of whatever platform your code eventually executes on, while protecting you from the usual pitfalls of creating multithreaded applications.

PLINQ extends LINQ queries to decompose a single query into multiple subqueries that are run in parallel rather than sequentially. TPL allows you to create loops with iterations running in parallel rather than one after another. While the declarative syntax of PLINQ makes it easier to create parallel processes, TPL-oriented operations will be, in general, more lightweight than PLINQ queries. In many ways, though, choosing between TPL and PLINQ is a lifestyle choice. If you think in terms of parallel loops rather than parallel queries, it can be easier for you to design a TPL solution than a PLINQ solution.

Source of Information : Visual Studio Magazine August 2010