Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010

5.3. Parallel Loops

One of the easiest ways to parallelize your application is by using the parallel loop construct. Two types of loops can be run in parallel:

• Parallel.For()

• Parallel.ForEach()

Let's take a look at these now.

5.3.1. Parallel.For()

In our example application, we will stick with the stock quote scenario described previously, create a list of stock quotes, and then iterate through them using a Parallel.For() loop construct, passing each quote into a function that will simulate a long-running process.

To see the differences between running code in serial and parallel, we will also perform this task using a standard for loop. We will use a stopwatch instance to measure the time each loop takes to complete. It is worth stressing that ...