Since V1, .NET programmers have been afforded the luxury of an automatic queue-dequeue-execute-from-the-queue thread management infrastructure inside the CLR. This is .NET's Thread Pool.

As expected, the CLR's thread pool has improved with each iteration of the CLR (hey, V1 was, well, V1...). The goal has always been efficient, reliable, performant thread management. With CLR 4, the team that designs and implements the thread pool, have made some truly compelling changes, which should add up to a very solid thread pool shipping with CLR 4. One of the big changes is the addition of thread-stealing algorithms to support concurrency and parallelism. Indeed, CLR 4 has native support for the Parallel Computing Platform's Parallel Extensions for .NET. What does this mean, exactly? How does it work, exactly? What else is new in CLR 4's thread pool?

Meet developer Eric Eilebrecht and program manager Erika Parsons. Eric helped implement the thread pool (he's beeing doeing this for multiple versions, actually). Erika, as PMs do, helped design the thread pool and ensured that the design and implementation meets the needs expressed by customers who rely on the thread pool.

Tune in. Lots to learn. You'll be impressed both by the enhancements and direction set forth for the future in CLR 4's thread pool.

Eric has some great blog posts on the new addtions to the Threadpool in CLR 4 that will be very useful for expanding on the knowledge you gain from this conversation.