Fastest way to asynchronously execute a method?

Question

hi there,

i´m currently dealing with a problem where i have to dispatch hell a lot of functions to another thread to prevent the current function from blocking. now i wonder what the fastest way is to perform this task.

currently i´m stuck with

ThreadPool.UnsafeQueueUserWorkItem

as its slightly faster than the regular QueueUserWorkItem. however, i´m afraid that the threadpool may block this here. is there a faster way of dispatching a method call to another thread? i just wonder what the best practice is for such a task? unsafe code would be no problem as it i´s in a scenario where already a lot of interop is used. thanks j.

Answer 1

Well there are several ways to accomplish it.

You can either start a new thread:

 Thread thread = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(delegate //actually you better to use ThreadStart
 {
 //your code goes
 //for example:
 MessageBox.Show("Hello other worlds")
 }));

Though you will have to make sure that thread exits properly

Or use background worker:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.backgroundworker.aspx

Hope that helps

Answer 2

Inserting multiple or bigger items at once should reduce the overhead.

Edited after reading one of your comments:

I have experienced similar things. My usual remedy is not to dispatch every asynchronous request immediately but rather mimic what Nagle's Algorithm does for TCP.

Here, upon receiving a Request() you would dispatch it immediately only if no asynchronous work is pending. If asynchronous work is pending you would dispatch only if a certain number of milliseconds since the earliest non-dispatched Request has elapsed or a certain number of outstanding Request()s has accumulated.

This is an effective pattern to cut down overhead when getting frequent Request()s over which you have no control. Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Maybe you could throw all your dispatch requests into a List<> and wake up another background thread to make the calls to QueueUserWorkItem.

Am I understanding the problem correctly?