MSDN Magazine - October 2007 - (Page 70)

Joe Duffy and Ed Essey Parallel Running Queries On Multi-Core Processors ulti-core processors are here. Once pervasive mainly in servers and desktop PCs, now multi-core processors are being used in mobile phones and PDAs, resulting in great benefits in power consumption. Responding to the increased availability of multiprocessor platforms, Parallel Language Integrated Query (PLINQ) offers an easy way to take advantage of parallel hardware, including traditional multi-processor computers and the newer wave of multi-core processors. PLINQ is a query execution engine that accepts any LINQ-toObjects or LINQ-to-XML query and automatically utilizes multiple processors or cores for execution when they are available. The change in programming model is tiny, meaning you don’t need to be a concurrency guru to use it. In fact, threads and locks won’t even come up unless you really want to dive under the hood to understand how it all works. PLINQ is a key component of Parallel FX, the next generation of concurrency support in the Microsoft® .NET Framework. Using technologies like PLINQ will become increasingly crucial to ensuring the scalability of software on future parallel microprocessor architectures. By utilizing LINQ at choice places throughout your applications today—such as where you have data- or compute-intensive operations that can be expressed as queries—you will ensure that those fragments of your programs continue to perform better when PLINQ becomes available and the machines 70 msdnmagazine running your application grow from 2 to 4 to 32 processors and beyond. And even if you only run that code on a single-processor machine, the overhead of PLINQ is typically so small that you won’t notice a difference. In addition, the data parallel nature of PLINQ ensures your programs will continue to scale as the size of your data sets increases. In this article, we review the goals of the PLINQ technology, where it fits into the broader .NET Framework and other con- lINQ This article is based on the Parallel FX library, which is currently in development. All information herein is subject to change. This article uses the following technologies: Parallel FX library This article discusses: PLINQ basics ✥ The PLINQ programming model ✥ Concurrent exceptions ✥ Output ordering ✥ Joe Duffy is Development Lead for the Parallel FX team at Microsoft and blogs regularly at www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog. He is writing a book, Concurrent Programming on Windows, to be published by Addison-Wesley. Ed Essey, a five-year veteran Program Manager at Microsoft, works on parallel computing models and infrastructure. http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - October 2007

Cover Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Basic Instincts Data Points Cutting Edge Pooled Threads WPF Threads Parallel Linq Parallel Performance Mobile Apps Test Run Foundations Windows with C++ Netting C++ .NET Matters { End Bracket } Net Nuptials

MSDN Magazine - October 2007

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