Why simple multi task doesn't work when multi thread does?

Question

var finalList = new List<string>();
var list = new List<int> {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ................. 999999};

var init = 0;
var limitPerThread = 5;

var countDownEvent = new CountdownEvent(list.Count);

for (var i = 0; i < list.Count; i++)
{
    var listToFilter = list.Skip(init).Take(limitPerThread).ToList();
    new Thread(delegate()
                   {
                       Foo(listToFilter);
                       countDownEvent.Signal();
                   }).Start();    
    init += limitPerThread;
}

//wait all to finish
countDownEvent.Wait();


private static void Foo(List<int> listToFilter)
{
    var listDone = Boo(listToFilter);
    lock (Object)
    {
        finalList.AddRange(listDone);
    }
}

This doesn't:

var taskList = new List<Task>();

for (var i = 0; i < list.Count; i++)
{
    var listToFilter = list.Skip(init).Take(limitPerThread).ToList();
    var task = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Foo(listToFilter)); 
    taskList.add(task);   
    init += limitPerThread;
}

//wait all to finish
Task.WaitAll(taskList.ToArray());

This process must create at least 700 threads in the end. When I run using Thread, it works and creates all of them. But with Task it doesn't.. It seems like its not starting multiples Tasks async.

I really wanna know why.... any ideas?

EDIT

Another version with PLINQ (as suggested).

var taskList = new List<Task>(list.Count);
Parallel.ForEach(taskList, t =>
                   {
                       var listToFilter = list.Skip(init).Take(limitPerThread).ToList();
                       Foo(listToFilter);
                       init += limitPerThread;
                       t.Start();
                   });
Task.WaitAll(taskList.ToArray());

EDIT2:

public static List<Communication> Foo(List<Dispositive> listToPing)
{
    var listResult = new List<Communication>();
    foreach (var item in listToPing)
    {
        var listIps = item.listIps;
        var communication = new Communication
        {
            IdDispositive = item.Id
        };

        try
        {
            for (var i = 0; i < listIps.Count(); i++)
            {
                var oPing = new Ping().Send(listIps.ElementAt(i).IpAddress, 10000);
                if (oPing != null)
                {
                    if (oPing.Status.Equals(IPStatus.TimedOut) && listIps.Count() > i+1)
                        continue;
                    if (oPing.Status.Equals(IPStatus.TimedOut))
                    {
                        communication.Result = "NOK"; 
                        break;
                    }
                    communication.Result = oPing.Status.Equals(IPStatus.Success) ? "OK" : "NOK";
                    break;
                }
                if (listIps.Count() > i+1)
                    continue;
                communication.Result = "NOK";
                break;
            }
        }
        catch
        {
            communication.Result = "NOK";
        }
        finally
        {
            listResult.Add(communication);
        }
    }

    return listResult;
}

Answer 1

Tasks are NOT multithreading. They can be used for that, but mostly they're actually used for the opposite - multiplexing on a single thread.

To use tasks for multithreading, I suggest using Parallel LINQ. It has many optimizations in it already, such as intelligent partitioning of your lists and only spawning as many threads as there ar CPU cores, etc.

---

To understand Task and async, think of it this way - a typical workload often includes IO that needs to be waited upon. Maybe you read a file, or query a webservice, or access a database, or whatever. The point is - your thread gets to wait a loooong time (in CPU cycles at least) until you get a response from some faraway destination.

In the Olden Days™ that meant that your thread was getting locked down (suspended) until that response came. If you wanted to do something else in the meantime, you needed to spawn a new thread. That's doable, but not too efficient. Each OS thread carries a significant overhead (memory, kernel resources) with it. And you could end up with several threads actively burning the CPU, which means that the OS needs to switch between them so that each gets a bit of CPU time and these "context switches" are pretty expensive.

async changes that workflow. Now you can have multiple workloads executing on the same thread. While one piece of work is awaiting the result from a faraway source, another can step in and use that thread to do something else useful. When that second workload gets to its own await, the first can awaken and continue.

After all, it doesn't make sense to spawn more threads than there are CPU cores. You're not going to get more work done that way. Just the opposite - more time will be spent on switching the threads and less time will be available for useful work.

That is what the Task/async/await was originally designed for. However Parallel LINQ has also taken advantage of it and reused it for multithreading. In this case you can look at it this way - the other threads is what your main thread is the "faraway destination" that your main thread is waiting on.

Answer 2

Tasks are executed on the Thread Pool. This means that a handful of threads will serve a large number of tasks. You have multi-threading, but not a thread for every task spawned.

You should use tasks. You should aim to use as much threads as your CPU. Generally, the thread pool is doing this for you.