Managed Threading Basics

The first four topics of this section are designed to help you determine when to use managed threading, and to explain some basic features. For information on classes that provide additional features, see Threading Objects and Features.

The rest of the topics in this section cover advanced topics, including the interaction of managed threading with the Windows operating system.

In This Section

• Threads and Threading
  Discusses the advantages and drawbacks of multiple threads, and outlines the scenarios in which you might create threads or use thread pool threads.
• Synchronizing Data for Multithreading
  Describes strategies for synchronizing data in classes that will be used with multiple threads.
• Thread States
  Describes the basic thread states, and explains how to detect whether a thread is running.
• Foreground and Background Threads
  Explains the differences between foreground and background threads.
• Managed and Unmanaged Threading in Microsoft Windows
  Discusses the relationship between managed and unmanaged threading, lists managed equivalents for Windows threading APIs, and discusses the interaction of COM apartments and managed threads.
• Thread.Suspend, Garbage Collection, and Safe Points
  Describes thread suspension and garbage collection.
• Thread Local Storage and Thread-Relative Static Fields
  Describes thread-relative storage mechanisms.

Related Sections

• Thread
  Provides reference documentation for the Thread class, which represents a managed thread, whether it came from unmanaged code or was created in a managed application.