Parallel Extensions: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:06, 8 April 2012

Revision as of 17:25, 26 June 2012

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==Task Parallel Library==

The '''Task Parallel Library''' ('''TPL''') is the [[task parallelism]] component of the Parallel Extensions to .NET.<ref name="Concurrent Programming on Windows Appendix B"/> It exposes parallel constructs like parallel <code>For</code> and <code>ForEach</code> loops, using regular method calls and [[Delegate (.NETCLI)|delegatesdelegate]]s, thus the constructs can be used from any language[[List supportingof theCLI [[.NETlanguages|CLI Frameworklanguages]]. The job of spawning and terminating [[Thread (computing)|threads]], as well as scaling the number of threads according to the number of available processors, is done by the library itself.<ref name="msdnmag"/>

TPL also includes other constructs like ''Task'' and ''[[Future (programming)|Future]]''. A ''Task'' is an action that can be executed independent of the rest of the program. In that sense, it is semantically equivalent to a thread, except that it is a more light-weight object and comes without the overhead of creating an OS thread. Tasks are queued by a ''Task Manager'' object and are scheduled to run on multiple OS threads in a [[thread pool pattern|thread pool]] when their turn comes.