Creating threads - Task Factory StartNew vs new Thread

Question

I am just learning about the new Threading and Parallel libraries in  Net 4  In the past I would create a new Thread like so  as an example    DataInThread   new Thread new ThreadStart ThreadProcedure    DataInThread IsBackground   true  DataInThread Start      Now I can do   Task t   Task Factory StartNew      gt       ThreadProcedure          What is the difference if any   Thanks

User · Answer

Your first block of code tells CLR to create a Thread (say. T) for you which is can be run as background (use thread pool threads when scheduling T ). In concise, you explicitly ask CLR to create a thread for you to do something and call Start() method on thread to start.

Your second block of code does the same but delegate (implicitly handover) the responsibility of creating thread (background- which again run in thread pool) and the starting thread through StartNew method in the Task Factory implementation.

This is a quick difference between given code blocks. Having said that, there are few detailed difference which you can google or see other answers from my fellow contributors.

User · Answer

In the first case you are simply starting a new thread while in the second case you are entering in the thread pool   The thread pool job is to share and recycle threads  It allows to avoid losing a few millisecond every time we need to create a new thread    There are a several ways to enter the thread pool    with the TPL  Task Parallel Library  like you did by calling ThreadPool QueueUserWorkItem by calling BeginInvoke on a delegate  when you use a BackgroundWorker

User · Answer

The task gives you all the goodness of the task API    Adding continuations  Task ContinueWith  Waiting for multiple tasks to complete  either all or any  Capturing errors in the task and interrogating them later Capturing cancellation  and allowing you to specify cancellation to start with  Potentially having a return value Using await in C  5 Better control over scheduling  if it s going to be long-running  say so when you create the task so the task scheduler can take that into account    Note that in both cases you can make your code slightly simpler with method group conversions   DataInThread   new Thread ThreadProcedure      Or    Task t   Task Factory StartNew ThreadProcedure

User · Answer

There is a big difference  Tasks are scheduled on the ThreadPool and could even be executed synchronous if appropiate   If you have a long running background work you should specify this by using the correct Task Option   You should prefer Task Parallel Library over explicit thread handling  as it is more optimized  Also you have more features like Continuation

[c#] Creating threads - Task.Factory.StartNew vs new Thread()

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