Async method not running in parallel

Question

In the following code, in the B method, the code Trace.TraceInformation("B - Started"); never gets called.

Should the method be running in parallel?

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        private static async Task A()
        {
            for (;;)
            {
            }
        }


        private static async Task B()
        {
            Trace.TraceInformation("B - Started");
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var tasks = new List<Task> { A(), B() };
            Task.WaitAll(tasks.ToArray());
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

The async modifier is not a magic spawn-a-thread-here marker. It's sole purpose is to let the compiler know a method might depend on some asynchronous operation (A complex data-processing thread, I/O...) so it has to setup a state machine to coordinate the callbacks resulting from those asynchronous operations.

To make A run on another thread you would invoke it using Task.Run which wraps the invocation on a new thread with a Task object, which you can await. Be aware that await-ing a method does not mean your code runs in parallel to A's execution all by itself: It will until the very line you await the Task object, telling the compiler you need the value that the Task object returns. In this case await-ing Task.Run(A) will effectively make your program run forever, waiting for A to return, something that will never happen (barring computer malfunction).

Do have in mind that marking a method as async but not actually awaiting anything will only have the effect of a compiler warning. If you await something that is not truly async (It returns immediately on the calling thread with something like Task.FromResult) it will mean your program takes a runtime speed penalty. It is very slight, however.

Answer 2

Short answer

No, as you wrote your two async methods, they are indeed not running in parallel. Adding await Task.Yield(); to your first method (e.g. inside the loop) would allow them to do so, but there are more reasonable and straightforward methods, highly depending on what you actually need (interleaved execution on a single thread? Actual parallel execution on multiple threads?).

Long answer

First of all, declaring functions as async does not inherently make them run asynchronously or something. It rather simplifies the syntax to do so - read more about the concepts here: Asynchronous Programming with Async and Await

Effectively A is not asynchronous at all, as there is not a single await inside its method body. Instructions up to the first use of await run synchronously like a regular method would.

From then on, the object that you await determines what happens next, i.e. the context that the remaining method runs in.

To force execution of a task to happen on another thread, use Task.Run or similar.

In this scenario, adding await Task.Yield() does the trick since the current synchronization context is null and this happens to indeed cause the task scheduler (should be ThreadPoolTaskScheduler) to execute the remaining instuctions on a thread-pool thread - some environment or configuration might cause you to only have one of them, so things would still not run in parallel.

Summary

The moral of the story is: Be aware of the differences between two concepts:

• concurrency (which is enabled by using async/await reasonably) and
• parallelism (which only happens when concurrent tasks get scheduled the right way or if you enforce it using Task.Run, Thread, etc. in which case the use of async is completely irrelevant anyway)

Answer 3

No, the methods shown are not expected to "run in parallel".

Why B is never called - you have list of tasks tasks constructed via essentially series of .Add calls - and first is result of A() is added. Since the A method does not have any await it will run to the completion synchronously on the same thread. And after that B() would be called.

Now A will never complete (it is sitting in infinite loop) so really code will not even reach call to B.

Note that even if creation would succeed code never finish WaitAll as A still sits in infinite loop.

If you want methods to "run in parallel" you need to either run them implicitly/explicitly on new threads (i.e. with Task.Run or Thread.Start) or for I/O bound calls let method to release thread with await.