Concurrent collections eating too much cpu without Thread.Sleep

Question

What would be the correct usage of either, BlockingCollection or ConcurrentQueue so you can freely dequeue items without burning out half or more of your CPU using a thread ?

I was running some tests using 2 threads and unless I had a Thread.Sleep of at least 50~100ms it would always hit at least 50% of my CPU.

Here is a fictional example:

private void _DequeueItem()
{
    object o = null;
    while(socket.Connected)
    {
        while (!listOfQueueItems.IsEmpty)
        {
            if (listOfQueueItems.TryDequeue(out o))
            {
                // use the data
            }
        }
    }
}

With the above example I would have to set a thread.sleep so the cpu doesnt blow up.

Note: I have also tried it without the while for IsEmpty check, result was the same.

Answer 1

It is not because of the BlockingCollection or ConcurrentQueue, but the while loop:

while(socket.Connected)
{
    while (!listOfQueueItems.IsEmpty)
    { /*code*/ }
}

Of course it will take the cpu down; because of if the queue is empty, then the while loop is just like:

while (true) ;

which in turn will eat the cpu resources.

This is not a good way of using ConcurrentQueue you should use AutoResetEvent with it so whenever item is added you will be notified. Example:

private ConcurrentQueue<Data> _queue = new ConcurrentQueue<Data>();
private AutoResetEvent _queueNotifier = new AutoResetEvent(false);

//at the producer:
_queue.Enqueue(new Data());
_queueNotifier.Set();

//at the consumer:
while (true)//or some condition
{
    _queueNotifier.WaitOne();//here we will block until receive signal notification.
    Data data;
    if (_queue.TryDequeue(out data))
    {
        //handle the data
    }
}

For a good usage of the BlockingCollection you should use the GetConsumingEnumerable() to wait for the items to be added, Like:

//declare the buffer
private BlockingCollection<Data> _buffer = new BlockingCollection<Data>(new ConcurrentQueue<Data>());

//at the producer method:
_messageBuffer.Add(new Data());

//at the consumer
foreach (Data data in _buffer.GetConsumingEnumerable())//it will block here automatically waiting from new items to be added and it will not take cpu down 
{
    //handle the data here.
}

Answer 2

You really want to be using the BlockingCollection class in this case. It is designed to block until an item appears in the queue. A collection of this nature is often referred to as a blocking queue. This particular implementation is safe for multiple producers and multiple consumers. That is something that is surprisingly difficult to get right if you tried implementing it yourself. Here is what your code would look like if you used BlockingCollection.

private void _DequeueItem()
{
    while(socket.Connected)
    {
        object o = listOfQueueItems.Take();
        // use the data
    }
}

The Take method blocks automatically if the queue is empty. It blocks in a manner that puts the thread in the SleepWaitJoin state so that it will not consume CPU resources. The neat thing about BlockingCollection is that it also uses low-lock strategies to increase performance. What this means is that Take will check to see if there is an item in the queue and if not then it will briefly perform a spin wait to prevent a context switch of the thread. If the queue is still empty then it will put the thread to sleep. This means that BlockingCollection will have some of the performance benefits that ConcurrentQueue provides in regards to concurrent execution.

Answer 3

You can call Thread.Sleep() only when queue is empty:

private void DequeueItem()
{
    object o = null;

    while(socket.Connected)
    {
        if (listOfQueueItems.IsEmpty)
        {
            Thread.Sleep(50);
        }
        else if (listOfQueueItems.TryDequeue(out o))
        {
            // use the data
        }
    }
}

Otherwise you should consider to use events.