How to restrict the CPU usage a C# program takes?

Question

I am developing a C# program, and i have one function that consumes too much CPU. I would like to know a way to control this by code (not with any external application) and restrict the percentage of CPU usage. For example, if it uses 90% of the CPU usage, to make my app consume only a 20%, even if it becomes slower. It must be done automatically and from within the app. If you provide a class, it would be fantastic.

Answer 1

You can slow down a loop by calling Thread.Sleep(milliseconds) within the loop. That hands the CPU back to the scheduler.

But 'consuming too much CPU' makes me think you might have more fundamental problems. Is this thread polling and waiting for something else? If so, you should consider the use of Events or some other kernel-based signalling mechanism.

Answer 2

I don't know if you can do that, but you can change the thread priority of the executing thread via the Priority property. You would set that by:

Thread.CurrentThread.Priority = ThreadPriority.Lowest;

Also, I don't think you really want to cap it. If the machine is otherwise idle, you'd like it to get busy on with the task, right? ThreadPriority helps communicate this to the scheduler.

Answer 3

I guess you need to query some kind of OS API to find out how much of the CPU are you consuming and take throttling decisions (like Thread.Sleep) from that on.