Running parts of my application on a different CPU priority

Question

Got a winform C# application.

It allows a stream of images to be displayed (like a video).

I also upload these jpegs 1 at time to my web server and a User can view these jpegs (like a video).

In the quest to make my code as efficient as possible I was wondering whether I can execute the part of my code that is responsible for uploading these images under a different priority - like real time for instance?

Is this possible?

If so..

Do I have to port my class object responsible for uploading these images into an external DLL? Then how would I 'launch' it under a different process priority?

If all this is possible, and If I accept the possible trade off of other processes on my PC which may be affected by all this will it actually give me an improved performance?

Thanks

Answer 1

In the quest to make my code as efficient as possible

It's good that you're thinking about performance up-front. I.e., choosing the proper data structures and algorithms based on how they're used.

However, what you want to avoid is premature optimization. And thread/process priorities definitely fall under that category.

I was wondering whether I can execute the part of my code that is responsible for uploading these images under a different priority - like real time for instance?

...

Is this possible?

Yes, but you shouldn't.

The Windows OS already has what's called a dynamic priority boost. This means that I/O-bound threads already get a boost in priority.

It's best to let the OS handle priorities.

Answer 2

Although the benefits of this style of design are questionable, one way to accomplish that would be to manually create a thread in your application to run the code you want prioritized and then to set the thread priority using the Thread.Priority property.

Another option is to run the high-priority code in a separate process and change the process-level priority. This might offer slightly better performance than relying on the thread priority but will add further complexity because now you have the overhead of doing inter-process communication with the rest of your application.

You may want to read this article on MSDN on Windows task scheduler priority system.

Answer 3

I do not think the threads priorities will help you to solve the problem but if you want yes you can change the threads priority in C# and you have also a a lot of libraries which are helping you to control the thread workflow like

• TPL, PLINQ
• Tasks
• Async, Await
• BackgroundWorker
• Threads etc C#.

TPL for Task Parallel Library very powerful on multi processors.

Think carefully before elevating a thread’s priority — it can lead to problems such as resource starvation for other threads.

using (Process p = Process.GetCurrentProcess())
  p.PriorityClass = ProcessPriorityClass.High;

enum ThreadPriority { Lowest, BelowNormal, Normal, AboveNormal, Highest }

I recommnded you to use encoding/decoding for the images this will help you to convert a sequence of images to video. look to this link:

Rendering a Sequence of Images in C# to make a video