Pro WPF in C# 2010: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 4

31.1. Multithreading

Multithreading is the art of executing more than one piece of code at once. The goal of multithreading is usually to create a more responsive interface—one that doesn't freeze up while it's in the midst of other work—although you can also use multithreading to take better advantage of dual-core CPUs when executing a processor-intensive algorithm or to perform other work during a high-latency operation (for example, to perform some calculations while waiting for a response from a web service).

Early in the design of WPF, the creators considered a new threading model. This model—called thread rental—allowed user interface objects to be accessed on any thread. To reduce the cost of locking, groups of related objects could be ...