Execute a certain number of operations (calls to a method) per second

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Hi everybody,

I need to execute a method a certain number of times per second. I tried to use three approaches, which didn't work.
I tried:
1. The DispatcherTimer,
2. The Thread.Sleep method (in this case, I executed the method which calls the method which have to be called x times per second in a new thread)
3. The System.Threading.Timer class.

None of them work properly.
If I put a number of 50 ops/s, i t takes 3 seconds to complete a progressbar (100 calls to the method UpdateProgressBar, which increase the value of the progress of 1 unit) instead of 2 seconds.
If I put 100 or 1000, it is the same, but if I put 1001, it is completed immediately.
I measured the time the method takes to call UpdateProgressBar 100 times and I found out that's about 1ms, so the 1 second error is not justified. I imagine that the timer interval property does not accept small values like 1.66666 milliseconds, or 20 milliseconds might be equal to 30 milliseconds... I don't know...

Can you help me to find the best approach to this problem?

Thanks a lot!!

Jymmy097

Posted 26-Jan-14 6:49am

LLLLGGGG

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PIEBALDconsult 26-Jan-14 12:58pm

Why?

2 solutions

Solution 1

You are trying to achieve something which is bound to be potentially unreliable, no matter how you do it. This is not a real-time OS. You cannot guarantee that your operation completes in a time frame shorted than the time slice you want to dedicate to it. You can improve your changes by adding priority to your thread and/or to your process, but those are only changes.

If you explain the ultimate goal of your activity, you can get a change for some useful advice. :-)

—SA

Posted 26-Jan-14 8:07am

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

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BillWoodruff · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-26T08:41:00

First, CodeProject is your friend: "Microsecond and Millisecond C# Timer" [^] (April, 2013). I think the content in that article can be adapted to meet your needs, since the author is dealing with a case where 0.8 ms. second accuracy (most of the time) is needed.

Without knowing a great deal more about what the method you need to execute 20 times per second is, and its behavior (callbacks ?), and the context of its use (threading ? explicit use of #n cores on a multi-core cpu ?) it's difficult to say much except that you can definitely exclude using the System.Windows.Forms.Timer (limited to about 55ms. accuracy, or less, I read somewhere).

Given the System.Threading.Timer uses the ThreadPool, and is commonly not used in WinForm applications, using that one may be questionable here.

System.Timers.Timer seems like the best candidate for your use; have you tried that ? The author of the article cited suggests its accuracy is about 15ms. which would meet your needs.

Given what you know (or can estimate) of the time it will take to execute the code in the method, are you sure your current hardware/software configuration is capable of executing the method 20 times per second ?

Will the method always take the same exact time to execute ?