[optimization] What do the terms "CPU bound" and "I/O bound" mean?

See what Microsoft says.

The core of async programming is the Task and Task objects, which model asynchronous operations. They are supported by the async and await keywords. The model is fairly simple in most cases:

• For I/O-bound code, you await an operation which returns a Task or Task inside of an async method.

• For CPU-bound code, you await an operation which is started on a background thread with the Task.Run method.

The await keyword is where the magic happens. It yields control to the caller of the method that performed await, and it ultimately allows a UI to be responsive or a service to be elastic.

I/O-Bound Example: Downloading data from a web service

private readonly HttpClient _httpClient = new HttpClient();

downloadButton.Clicked += async (o, e) =>
{
    // This line will yield control to the UI as the request
    // from the web service is happening.
    //
    // The UI thread is now free to perform other work.
    var stringData = await _httpClient.GetStringAsync(URL);
    DoSomethingWithData(stringData);
};

CPU-bound Example: Performing a Calculation for a Game

private DamageResult CalculateDamageDone()
{
    // Code omitted:
    //
    // Does an expensive calculation and returns
    // the result of that calculation.
}

calculateButton.Clicked += async (o, e) =>
{
    // This line will yield control to the UI while CalculateDamageDone()
    // performs its work.  The UI thread is free to perform other work.
    var damageResult = await Task.Run(() => CalculateDamageDone());
    DisplayDamage(damageResult);
};

Examples above showed how you can use async and await for I/O-bound and CPU-bound work. It's key that you can identify when a job you need to do is I/O-bound or CPU-bound, because it can greatly affect the performance of your code and could potentially lead to misusing certain constructs.

Here are two questions you should ask before you write any code:

Will your code be "waiting" for something, such as data from a database?

• If your answer is "yes", then your work is I/O-bound.

Will your code be performing a very expensive computation?

• If you answered "yes", then your work is CPU-bound.

If the work you have is I/O-bound, use async and await without Task.Run. You should not use the Task Parallel Library. The reason for this is outlined in the Async in Depth article.

If the work you have is CPU-bound and you care about responsiveness, use async and await but spawn the work off on another thread with Task.Run. If the work is appropriate for concurrency and parallelism, you should also consider using the Task Parallel Library.