Faster alternative to nested loops?

Question

I have a need to create a list of combinations of numbers. The numbers are quite small so I can use byte rather than int. However it requires many

Answer 1

On my machine, this generates the combinations in 222 ms vs 760 ms (the 13 for loops):

private static byte[,] GenerateCombinations(byte[] maxNumberPerLevel)
{
    var levels = maxNumberPerLevel.Length;

    var periodsPerLevel = new int[levels];
    var totalItems = 1;
    for (var i = 0; i < levels; i++)
    {
        periodsPerLevel[i] = totalItems;
        totalItems *= maxNumberPerLevel[i];
    }

    var results = new byte[totalItems, levels];

    Parallel.For(0, levels, level =>
    {
        var periodPerLevel = periodsPerLevel[level];
        var maxPerLevel = maxNumberPerLevel[level];
        for (var i = 0; i < totalItems; i++)
            results[i, level] = (byte)(i / periodPerLevel % maxPerLevel);
    });

    return results;
}