Concurrency in .NET

4 The basics of processing big data: data parallelism, part 1

This chapter covers

• The importance of data parallelism in a world of big data
• Applying the Fork/Join pattern
• Writing declarative parallel programs
• Understanding the limitation of a parallel for loop
• Increasing performance with data parallelism

Imagine you’re cooking a spaghetti for dinner for four, and let’s say it takes 10 minutes to prepare and serve the pasta. You begin the preparation by filling a medium-sized pot with water to boil. Then, two more friends show up at your house for dinner. Clearly, you need to make more pasta. You can switch to a bigger pot of water with more spaghetti, which will take longer to cook, or you can use a second pot in tandem with the first, ...