Let’s check today how to write a simple For loop using parallel programming. Basically the parallel programming takes advantage of the multi-processor computing and the .NET Framework 4.0 provides a set of tools to help you out developing multi-thread applications.

Method Overloads

The most basic Parallel For loop overload accepts a start index (inclusive), an end index (exclusive) and a delegate that is executed once per iteration.

• ParallelLoopResult For(int fromInclusive, int toExclusive, Action<int, ParallelLoopState> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(int fromInclusive, int toExclusive, Action<int> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(long fromInclusive, long toExclusive, Action<long, ParallelLoopState> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(long fromInclusive, long toExclusive, Action<long> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(int fromInclusive, int toExclusive, ParallelOptions parallelOptions, Action<int, ParallelLoopState> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(int fromInclusive, int toExclusive, ParallelOptions parallelOptions, Action<int> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(long fromInclusive, long toExclusive, ParallelOptions parallelOptions, Action<long, ParallelLoopState> body);
• ParallelLoopResult For(long fromInclusive, long toExclusive, ParallelOptions parallelOptions, Action<long> body);

Generic overloads

The generic overloads give you all the flexibility to perform Parallel For loops against several different types and control each the state for each thread execution:

• ParallelLoopResult For<TLocal>(int fromInclusive, int toExclusive, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<int, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally);
• ParallelLoopResult For<TLocal>(long fromInclusive, long toExclusive, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<long, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally);
• ParallelLoopResult For<TLocal>(int fromInclusive, int toExclusive, ParallelOptions parallelOptions, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<int, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally);
• ParallelLoopResult For<TLocal>(long fromInclusive, long toExclusive, ParallelOptions parallelOptions, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<long, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally);

How to

Let’s create a simple Parallel For loop that performs a sum of all numbers existing from zero until the number passed as parameter:

public void ParallelCalculation(int maximum)
{
    int subTotal = 0;

    Parallel.For(0, sequenceSize, i =>
    {
        subTotal += i;
    });
}

On the previous method we are passing three parameters to the Parallel For loop: the start and end indexes and a delegate that is executed once per iteration.

The following method is the same code implementation but with sequential programming.

public void SequentialCalculation(int maximum)
{
    int subTotal = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < maximum; i++)
    {
        subTotal += i;
    }
}

Performance

Let’s use both methods shown previously to make a really simple performance test by executing several times with different parameters. The time to perform the calculation changes from computer to computer when you have different numbers of processors. Running the application on a laptop with 2 processors the results were (in milliseconds):

Parameter        Sequential        Parallel

1,000                      17ms          16ms

1,000,000                69ms          59ms

5,000,000              410ms         365ms

50,000,000          3142ms        2796ms

Let’s add a Console.WriteLine that writes the partial results of the calculation to the Console window to check how the execution time changes:

Parameter        Sequential        Parallel

1,000                    643ms          519ms

10,000               2,821ms        1,727ms

100,000            21,164ms      13,799ms

1,000,000        239,585ms    129,016ms

Let’s check tomorrow how to work with Parallel For Each loops.

Stay tuned!

A new feature available on the .NET framework 4.0 is called Named Parameters. The idea of the named parameters is to invoke operations without passing the parameters in the regular sequence as we’ve been developing but to name the parameters.

A similar feature was added to the .NET framework 3.0 that allows us to initialize classes by using named properties. For more details about class initializer, check the Tip #72.

How to

The method declaration does not change at all but the way how we invoke it has a different syntax. Assuming we have the following method:

public void MyMethod(int customerId, DateTime shipDate) { }

The syntax to invoke the method using named parameter is MethodName(parameterName: Value);

For our sample method we can use named parameters in a similar way than the next code:

MyMethod(shipDate: DateTime.Now, customerId: 1234);

Welcome to the series of posts about the .NET Framework 4.0.

Let’s start by the first feature that has been available for years on Visual Basic development and now is available for C# programs: Optional parameters on methods.

Take a look on the following code snippet:

public void MyMethod(int a = 123)
{
    Console.WriteLine(a);
}

The simple method above accepts an integer as parameter. You may have noticed the existence of a value being assigned to the parameter “a”. When a default value is assigned on the method declaration the parameter becomes optional and there is no obligation of passing any value to the method.

Assuming the method calls below, check the results of them:

MyMethod(12); // Output: 12
MyMethod(); // Output: 123