How to properly run multiple async tasks in parallel?

Question

What if you need to run multiple asynchronous I/O tasks in parallel but need to make sure that no more than X I/O processes are running at the same time; and pre and post I/O processing tasks shouldn't have such limitation.

Here is a scenario - let's say there are 1000 tasks; each of them accepts a text string as an input parameter; transforms that text (pre I/O processing) then writes that transformed text into a file. The goal is to make pre-processing logic utilize 100% of CPU/Cores and I/O portion of the tasks run with max 10 degree of parallelism (max 10 simultaneously opened for writing files at a time).

Can you provide a sample code how to do it with C# / .NET 4.5?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2012/01/23/using-async-for-file-access-alan-berman.aspx

Answer 1

I think using TPL Dataflow for this would be a good idea: you create pre- and post-process blocks with unbounded parallelism, a file-writing block with limited parallelism and link them together. Something like:

var unboundedParallelismOptions =
    new ExecutionDataflowBlockOptions
    {
        MaxDegreeOfParallelism = DataflowBlockOptions.Unbounded
    };

var preProcessBlock = new TransformBlock<string, string>(
    s => PreProcess(s), unboundedParallelismOptions);

var writeToFileBlock = new TransformBlock<string, string>(
    async s =>
            {
                await WriteToFile(s);
                return s;
            },
    new ExecutionDataflowBlockOptions { MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 10 });

var postProcessBlock = new ActionBlock<string>(
    s => PostProcess(s), unboundedParallelismOptions);

var propagateCompletionOptions =
    new DataflowLinkOptions { PropagateCompletion = true };

preProcessBlock.LinkTo(writeToFileBlock, propagateCompletionOptions);
writeToFileBlock.LinkTo(postProcessBlock, propagateCompletionOptions);

// use something like await preProcessBlock.SendAsync("text") here

preProcessBlock.Complete();
await postProcessBlock.Completion;

Where WriteToFile() could look like this:

private static async Task WriteToFile(string s)
{
    using (var writer = new StreamWriter(GetFileName()))
        await writer.WriteAsync(s);
}

Answer 2

It sounds like you'd want to consider a Djikstra Semaphore to control access to the starting of tasks.

However, this sounds like a typical queue/fixed number of consumers kind of problem, which may be a more appropriate way to structure it.

Answer 3

I would create an extension method in which one can set maximum degree of parallelism. SemaphoreSlim will be the savior here.

    /// <summary>
    /// Concurrently Executes async actions for each item of <see cref="IEnumerable<typeparamref name="T"/>
    /// </summary>
    /// <typeparam name="T">Type of IEnumerable</typeparam>
    /// <param name="enumerable">instance of <see cref="IEnumerable<typeparamref name="T"/>"/></param>
    /// <param name="action">an async <see cref="Action" /> to execute</param>
    /// <param name="maxDegreeOfParallelism">Optional, An integer that represents the maximum degree of parallelism,
    /// Must be grater than 0</param>
    /// <returns>A Task representing an async operation</returns>
    /// <exception cref="ArgumentOutOfRangeException">If the maxActionsToRunInParallel is less than 1</exception>
    public static async Task ForEachAsyncConcurrent<T>(
        this IEnumerable<T> enumerable,
        Func<T, Task> action,
        int? maxDegreeOfParallelism = null)
    {
        if (maxDegreeOfParallelism.HasValue)
        {
            using (var semaphoreSlim = new SemaphoreSlim(
                maxDegreeOfParallelism.Value, maxDegreeOfParallelism.Value))
            {
                var tasksWithThrottler = new List<Task>();

                foreach (var item in enumerable)
                {
                    // Increment the number of currently running tasks and wait if they are more than limit.
                    await semaphoreSlim.WaitAsync();

                    tasksWithThrottler.Add(Task.Run(async () =>
                    {
                        await action(item).ContinueWith(res =>
                        {
                            // action is completed, so decrement the number of currently running tasks
                            semaphoreSlim.Release();
                        });
                    }));
                }

                // Wait for all tasks to complete.
                await Task.WhenAll(tasksWithThrottler.ToArray());
            }
        }
        else
        {
            await Task.WhenAll(enumerable.Select(item => action(item)));
        }
    }

Sample Usage:

await enumerable.ForEachAsyncConcurrent(
    async item =>
    {
        await SomeAsyncMethod(item);
    },
    5);