C# Threading and Parallel Programming - Complete Demo Analysis

This comprehensive demo showcases the evolution from single-threaded to multi-threaded and parallel programming in C#, demonstrating performance improvements through various concurrency approaches.

Overview: Threading Concepts

Key Terminology

• Thread: Smallest unit of execution within a process
• Task: Higher-level abstraction over threads (preferred in modern C#)
• Parallel Programming: Executing multiple operations simultaneously
• Concurrency: Managing multiple tasks at once (may not be simultaneous)
• CPU-bound vs I/O-bound: Different optimization strategies

Demo Structure Analysis

Performance Measurement Setup

Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
stopwatch.Start();
// ... operations ...
stopwatch.Stop();
Console.WriteLine("Time taken = {0}", stopwatch.ElapsedTicks);

Purpose:

• Precise Timing: Measures execution time for performance comparison
• ElapsedTicks: High-resolution timing (more precise than milliseconds)
• Benchmarking: Enables objective comparison between approaches

Demo 1: Single Thread vs Multi-Thread Execution