Threads or asynch?

Question

How do you make your application multithreaded ? Do you use asynch functions ? or do you spawn a new thread ? I think that asynch functions are already spawning a thread so if your job is doing just some file reading, being lazy and just spawning your job on a thread would just "waste" ressources... So is there some kind of design when using thread or asynch functions ?

Answer 1

If you are talking about .Net, then don't forget the ThreadPool. The thread pool is also what asynch functions often use. Spawning to much threads can actually hurt your performance. A thread pool is designed to spawn just enough threads to do the work the fastest. So do use a thread pool instead of spwaning your own threads, unless the thread pool doesn't meet your needs.

PS: And keep an eye out on the Parallel Extensions from Microsoft