Click here to Skip to main content
15,867,594 members
Articles / Programming Languages / C#

Poor Man's Parallel.ForEach Iterator

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.71/5 (11 votes)
4 Feb 2009CPOL2 min read 74.6K   32   12
Parallel Task Library when released with .NET 4.0 will be great, until then here is a simple .NET 3.0 Parallel.ForEach for the rest of us.

Introduction

How about a simple parallel ForEach iterator that works with .NET 3.0 until Task Parallel Library is available with .NET 4.0.

Background

Task Parallel Library (TPL) will certainly help developers squeeze every bit of processing power out of their hardware, however Microsoft does not offer TPL for .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5. TPL and Parallel LINQ will be offered as part of .NET 4.0. Until Microsoft releases .NET 4.0 or developers upgrade their development environments, here is a “Poor Man’s Parallel.ForEach” for the rest of us.

There is vast amount of literature about parallel processing, however in a nutshell I will try to explain the motivation for this code and offer my warnings: Reasonably priced laptops come with two CPU cores and average Windows servers have eight CPU cores. Even if you have ten thousand elements to iterate, a serial iteration such as foreach, while or for can only utilize single core where all the other cores are idling. If a particular procedure doesn't need to access objects that constantly share state, spreading processing over multiple threads provides proven performance gains. Being careful about objects sharing state is utterly important, if a coder blindly starts converting traditional serial iterations to parallel iterations; results will not be any different than giving a chain-saw to an 8 year old.

Using the Code

The usage is of the code is exactly as in TPL. Very simple and concise:

C#
// Sample usage:   
var orders = GetOrders();
   Parallel.ForEach(orders, order => {
                                           if(order.IsValid)
                                             {
                                               order.Process();
                                             }
                                     });

Parallel.ForEach

I used asynchronous delegate invocation. Begin/End pattern is relatively simple to read and maintain. There is possibly an overhead using delegates over using System.Threads. Let me know how you can improve this code. I am looking forward to hear your comments.

C#
public class Parallel
    {
        public static int NumberOfParallelTasks;
        
        static Parallel()
        {
            NumberOfParallelTasks = Environment.ProcessorCount;  
        }

        public static void ForEach<T>(IEnumerable<T> enumerable,Action<T> action)
        {
            var syncRoot = new object();

            if (enumerable == null ) return;

            var enumerator = enumerable.GetEnumerator();
                   
            InvokeAsync<T> del = InvokeAction;
           
            var seedItemArray = new T[NumberOfParallelTasks];
            var resultList = new List<IAsyncResult>(NumberOfParallelTasks);

            for (int i = 0; i < NumberOfParallelTasks; i++)
            {
                bool moveNext;
                
                lock (syncRoot)
                {
                    moveNext = enumerator.MoveNext();
                    seedItemArray[i] = enumerator.Current;
                }
            
                if (moveNext)
                {
                    var iAsyncResult= del.BeginInvoke
		     (enumerator, action, seedItemArray[i], syncRoot,i, null,null);
                    resultList.Add(iAsyncResult);                   
                }               
            } 
            
            foreach(var iAsyncResult in resultList)
            {
                del.EndInvoke(iAsyncResult); 
                iAsyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.Close();
            }           
        }

        delegate void InvokeAsync<T>(IEnumerator<T> enumerator, 
		Action<T> achtion, T item, object syncRoot,  int i);

        static void InvokeAction<T>(IEnumerator<T> enumerator,Action<T> action,
				T item,object syncRoot,int i )
        {
            if(String.IsNullOrEmpty(Thread.CurrentThread.Name))
                Thread.CurrentThread.Name = 
			String.Format("Parallel.ForEach Worker Thread No:{0}", i);
            
            bool moveNext=true;

            while (moveNext)
            {
                action.Invoke(item);
                
                lock (syncRoot)
                {
                    moveNext = enumerator.MoveNext();
                    item = enumerator.Current;
                }
            }
        } 
    } 

Changes

There is always room for improvement. After publishing this article, I dug up other articles about BeginInvoke. Calling EndInvoke and AsyncWaitHandel.Close() is suggested not to leave garbage collection to chance. I tested it and it works fine and I didn't see performance overhead.

C#
foreach (var iAsyncResult in resultList)iAsyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne();

The above changed to the following code:

C#
foreach(var iAsyncResult in resultList)
            {
                del.EndInvoke(iAsyncResult); 
                iAsyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.Close();
            }     

History

  • 4th February, 2009: Initial post

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Architect Harley-Davidson
United States United States
Architect of Harley-Davidson's United States dealer's dealership management system.

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionCode trows Exception Pin
Member 1416480511-Nov-21 3:12
Member 1416480511-Nov-21 3:12 
PraiseWorking in SSIS for SQL2008R2 Pin
User 95945294-Oct-16 23:47
User 95945294-Oct-16 23:47 
QuestionDoes it come in a V-Twin? Pin
ProtoBytes29-Dec-09 9:21
ProtoBytes29-Dec-09 9:21 
GeneralPower Threading Library Pin
wallism10-Feb-09 19:25
wallism10-Feb-09 19:25 
QuestionDoes the parrallel.For chop up the work in an optimal way or is it better to do this explicitly? Pin
Nigel-Findlater9-Feb-09 20:15
Nigel-Findlater9-Feb-09 20:15 
AnswerRe: Does the parrallel.For chop up the work in an optimal way or is it better to do this explicitly? Pin
Emre Aydinceren10-Feb-09 4:02
Emre Aydinceren10-Feb-09 4:02 
GeneralProgram error [modified] Pin
Frank Willett6-Feb-09 7:58
Frank Willett6-Feb-09 7:58 
AnswerRe: Program error Pin
Emre Aydinceren8-Feb-09 17:48
Emre Aydinceren8-Feb-09 17:48 
GeneralRe: Program error Pin
Frank Willett9-Feb-09 8:48
Frank Willett9-Feb-09 8:48 
QuestionMultiple cores? Pin
Josh Fischer5-Feb-09 2:39
Josh Fischer5-Feb-09 2:39 
Can you please append the article and explain how this solution takes advantage of multiple core processors?
Thanks

Josh Fischer

QuestionMight this be a problem with too many threads? Pin
argyler4-Feb-09 21:40
argyler4-Feb-09 21:40 
AnswerRe: Might this be a problem with too many threads? Pin
assmax5-Feb-09 1:11
assmax5-Feb-09 1:11 

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.