MCSD Certification Toolkit (Exam 70-483): Programming in C#

Chapter 7

Multithreading and Asynchronous Processing

What You Will Learn in This Chapter

• Understanding threads and thread pool
• Using the Task Parallel Library
• Using concurrent collections
• Implementing asynchronous methods

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In 1967, Gordon Moore observed that the numbers of transistors that can be fit on the same surface on a silicon chip is doubling every other year. Today, this doubling happens every one-and-a-half years. Until 2005, this translated into several improvements such as doubling the frequency and processing speed, doubling the capacity, cutting the size of the chip in half, and so on. In 2005, the frequency a CPU could operate at reached a plateau. Although the hardware manufacturers could still follow Moore’s law, the frequency could not be increased without major implications, mainly because of the huge heat that got generated by the processor, and that heat needed to be taken care of. So to still benefit from technological advancement outlined by Moore’s law, the hardware manufacturer started to deliver more processing units per processor, known as cores, instead of increasing the speed. Developers now face the biggest challenge of their careers because many are used to thinking and developing applications ...