I'm developing an Grammatical Evolution Engine that does the following:
Parse a file with the BNF rules.
<letter> ::= a|b|c|d
Generates random solutions based in some specific rules. (Basically, generates int arrays)
i1 = [22341,123412,521123, 123123], i2 = [213213, 123,5125,634643]
Maps those int arrays into the rules in the bnf file:
i1 = [22341,123412,521123, 123123] => ddbca
Checks those solutions with some target previously defined.
i1 value ('ddbca') is ('hello_world') ? 0, else 1
Selects the best performing solutions (top 5, top 10, etc) for latter usage
Randomly, picks 2 solutions from the solution list, and perform a crossover:
i1 = [22341,123412,521123, 123123], i2 = [213213, 123,5125,634643]
i1 x i2 => [22341,123412, 5125,634643]
Based in some predefined probability, executes a mutation in all individuals:
for(int i = 0; i < i3.length; i++)
{
if(random.NextDouble() <= 0.5) {
i3[i] = random.Next()
}
}
Again, execute mapping:
i3 = [22341,123412, 5125,634643] => qwerast
9. Check this new solution against target.
10. Goes back to step 5, and executes everything again.
The problem that i'm facing is: My algorithm is generating really large int arrays, but all of then are small lived. After a generation, all solutions that weren't selected, should be disposed. But, since the arrays are getting bigger, almost all of then go to the LOH, and when the GC goes to collect then, my application performance drops drastically.
In a single core environment, it starts at 15 generations/s, and after 160 generations, this drops to 3 generations per second.
I already tried to use ArrayPool, but, since i have hundreds of solutions in memory, i saw no performance improvement, and a great impact on memory usage.
I tried to used the ChunkedList Idea from this link, and the performance did not improve, but the LOH drops considerably.
I already change most of my classes to structs, tried to optimize most simple thing (Avoid Linq, use for insted of foreach, etc), but the big performance hit are in those large arrays.
Any of you can think in some kind of solution for this problem that i'm facing?
Thank you in advance!
Related
Given the task to improve the performance of a piece of code, I have came across the following phenomenon. I have a large collection of reference types in a generic Queue and I'm removing and processing the element one by one, then add them to another generic collection.
It seems the larger the elements are the more time it takes to add the element to the collection.
Trying to narrow down the problem to the relevant part of the code, I've written a test (omitting the processing of elements, just doing the insert):
class Small
{
public Small()
{
this.s001 = "001";
this.s002 = "002";
}
string s001;
string s002;
}
class Large
{
public Large()
{
this.s001 = "001";
this.s002 = "002";
...
this.s050 = "050";
}
string s001;
string s002;
...
string s050;
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
const int N = 1000000;
var storage = new List<object>(N);
for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
{
//storage.Add(new Small());
storage.Add(new Large());
}
List<object> outCollection = new List<object>();
Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
sw.Start();
for (int i = N-1; i > 0; --i)
{
outCollection.Add(storage[i];);
}
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
}
On the test machine, using the Small class, it takes about 25-30 ms to run, while it takes 40-45 ms with Large.
I know that the outCollection has to grow from time to time to be able to store all the items, so there is some dynamic memory allocation. But given an initial collection size even makes the difference more obvious: 11-12 ms with Small and 35-38 ms with Large objects.
I am somewhat surprised, as these are reference types, so I was expecting the collections to work only with references to the Small/Large instances. I have read Eric Lippert's relevant article that and know that references should not be treated as pointers. At the same time, AFAIK currently they are implemented as pointers and their size and the collection's performance should be independent of element size.
I've decided to put up a question here hoping that someone could explain or help me to understand what's happening here. Aside the performance improvement, I'm really curious what is happening behind the scenes.
Update:
Profiling data using the diagnostic tools didn't help me much, although I have to admit I'm not an expert using the profiler. I'll collect more data later today to find where the bottleneck is.
The pressure on the GC is quite high of course, especially with the Large instances. But once the instances are created and stored in the storage collection, and the program enters the loop, there was no collection triggered any more, and memory usage hasn't increased significantly (outCollction already pre-allocated).
Most of the CPU time is of course spent with memory allocation (JIT_New), around 62% and the only other significant entry is Function Name Inclusive Samples Exclusive Samples Inclusive Samples % Exclusive Samples % Module Name
System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.__Canon].Add with about 7%.
With 1 million items the preallocated outCollection size is 8 million bytes (the same as the size of storage); one can suspect 64 bit addresses being stored in the collections.
Probably I'm not using the tools properly or don't have the experience to interpret the results correctly, but the profiler didn't help me to get closer to the cause.
If the loop is not triggering collections and it only copies pointers between 2 pre-allocated collections, how could the item size cause any difference? Cache hit/miss ratio is supposed to be the more or less the same in both cases, as the loop is iteration over a list of "addresses" in both cases.
Thanks for all the help so far, I will collect more data, and put an update here if anything found.
I suspect that at least one action in the above (maybe some type checks) will require a de-reference. Then the fact that many Smalls are probably sat close together on the heap and thus sharing cache lines could account for some amount of difference (certainly many more of them could share a single cache line than Larges).
Added to which you are also accessing them in the reverse order in which they were allocated which maximises such a benefit.
Is there a way to put the GC on hold completely for a section of code?
The only thing I've found in other similar questions is GC.TryStartNoGCRegion but it is limited to the amount of memory you specify which itself is limited to the size of an ephemeral segment.
Is there a way to bypass that completely and tell .NET "allocate whatever you need, don't do GC period" or to increase the size of segments? From what I found it is at most 1GB on a many core server and this is way less than what I need to allocate yet I don't want GC to happen (I have up to terabytes of free RAM and there are thousands of GC spikes during that section, I'd be more than happy to trade those for 10 or even 100 times the RAM usage).
Edit:
Now that there's a bounty I think it's easier if I specify the use case. I'm loading and parsing a very large XML file (1GB for now, 12GB soon) into objects in memory using LINQ to XML. I'm not looking for an alternative to that. I'm creating millions of small objects from millions of XElements and the GC is trying to collect non-stop while I'd be very happy keeping all that RAM used up. I have 100s of GBs of RAM and as soon as it hits 4GB used, the GC starts collecting non-stop which is very memory friendly but performance unfriendly. I don't care about memory but I do care about performance. I want to take the opposite trade-off.
While i can't post the actual code here is some sample code that is very close to the end code that may help those who asked for more information :
var items = XElement.Load("myfile.xml")
.Element("a")
.Elements("b") // There are about 2 to 5 million instances of "b"
.Select(pt => new
{
aa = pt.Element("aa"),
ab = pt.Element("ab"),
ac = pt.Element("ac"),
ad = pt.Element("ad"),
ae = pt.Element("ae")
})
.Select(pt => new
{
aa = new
{
aaa = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aaa").Value),
aab = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aab").Value),
aac = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aac").Value),
aad = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aad").Value),
aae = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aae").Value)
},
ab = new
{
aba = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aba").Value),
abb = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("abb").Value),
abc = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("abc").Value),
abd = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("abd").Value),
abe = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("abe").Value)
},
ac = new
{
aca = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("aca").Value),
acb = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("acb").Value),
acc = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("acc").Value),
acd = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("acd").Value),
ace = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("ace").Value),
acf = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("acf").Value),
acg = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("acg").Value),
ach = double.Parse(pt.aa.Attribute("ach").Value)
},
ad1 = int.Parse(pt.ad.Attribute("ad1").Value),
ad2 = int.Parse(pt.ad.Attribute("ad2").Value),
ae = new double[]
{
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae1").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae2").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae3").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae4").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae5").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae6").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae7").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae8").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae9").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae10").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae11").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae12").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae13").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae14").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae15").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae16").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae17").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae18").Value),
double.Parse(pt.ae.Attribute("ae19").Value)
}
})
.ToArray();
Currently the best i could find was switching to server GC (which changed nothing by itself) that has larger segment size and let me use a much larger number for no gc section :
GC.TryStartNoGCRegion(10000000000); // On Workstation GC this crashed with a much lower number, on server GC this works
It goes against my expectations (this is 10GB, yet from what i could find in the doc online my segment size in my current setup should be 1 to 4GB so i expected an invalid argument).
With this setup i have what i wanted (GC is on hold, i have 22GB allocated instead of 7, all the temporary objects aren't GCed, but the GC runs once (a single time!) over the whole batch process instead of many many times per second (before the change the GC view in visual studio looked like a straight line from all the individual dots of GC triggering).
This isn't great as it won't scale (adding a 0 leads to a crash) but it's better than anything else i found so far.
Unless anyone finds out how to increase the segment size so that i can push this further or has a better alternative to completely halt the GC (and not just a certain generation but all of it) i will accept my own answer in a few days.
I think the best solution in your case would be this piece of code I used in one of my projects some times ago
var currentLatencySettings = GCSettings.LatencyMode;
GCSettings.LatencyMode = GCLatencyMode.LowLatency;
//your operations
GCSettings.LatencyMode = currentLatencySettings;
You are surpressing as much as you can (according to my knowledge) and you can still call GC.Collect() manually.
Look at the MSDN article here
Also, I would strongly suggest paging the parsed collection using LINQ Skip() and Take() methods. And finally joining the output arrays
I am not sure whether its possible in your case, however have you tried processing your XML file in parallel. If you can break down your XML file in smaller parts, you can spawn multiple processes from within your code. Each process handling a separate file. You can then combine all the results. This would certainly increase your performance and also with each process separately you will have its separate allocation of memory, which should also increase your memory allocation at a particular time while processing all the XML files.
We were having a performance issue in a C# while loop. The loop was super slow doing only one simple math calc. Turns out that parmIn can be a huge number anywhere from 999999999 to MaxInt. We hadn't anticipated the giant value of parmIn. We have fixed our code using a different methodology.
The loop, coded for simplicity below, did one math calc. I am just curious as to what the actual execution time for a single iteration of a while loop containing one simple math calc is?
int v1=0;
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2;
}
There is something else going on here. The following will complete in ~100ms for me. You say that the parmIn can approach MaxInt. If this is true, and the ParmIn2 is > 1, you're not checking to see if your int + the new int will overflow. If ParmIn >= MaxInt - parmIn2, your loop might never complete as it will roll back over to MinInt and continue.
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int i = 0;
int x = int.MaxValue - 50;
int z = 42;
System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch st = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();
st.Start();
while (i < x)
{
i += z;
}
st.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(st.Elapsed.Milliseconds.ToString());
Console.ReadLine();
}
Assuming an optimal compiler, it should be one operation to check the while condition, and one operation to do the addition.
The time, small as it is, to execute just one iteration of the loop shown in your question is ... surprise ... small.
However, it depends on the actual CPU speed and whatnot exactly how small it is.
It should be just a few machine instructions, so not many cycles to pass once through the iteration, but there could be a few cycles to loop back up, especially if branch prediction fails.
In any case, the code as shown either suffers from:
Premature optimization (in that you're asking about timing for it)
Incorrect assumptions. You can probably get a much faster code if parmIn is big by just calculating how many loop iterations you would have to perform, and do a multiplication. (note again that this might be an incorrect assumption, which is why there is only one sure way to find performance issues, measure measure measure)
What is your real question?
It depends on the processor you are using and the calculation it is performing. (For example, even on some modern architectures, an add may take only one clock cycle, but a divide may take many clock cycles. There is a comparison to determine if the loop should continue, which is likely to be around one clock cycle, and then a branch back to the start of the loop, which may take any number of cycles depending on pipeline size and branch prediction)
IMHO the best way to find out more is to put the code you are interested into a very large loop (millions of iterations), time the loop, and divide by the number of iterations - this will give you an idea of how long it takes per iteration of the loop. (on your PC). You can try different operations and learn a bit about how your PC works. I prefer this "hands on" approach (at least to start with) because you can learn so much more from physically trying it than just asking someone else to tell you the answer.
The while loop is couple of instructions and one instruction for the math operation. You're really looking at a minimal execution time for one iteration. it's the sheer number of iterations you're doing that is killing you.
Note that a tight loop like this has implications on other things as well, as it bogs down one CPU and it blocks the UI thread (if it's running on it). Thus, not only it is slow due to the number of operations, it also adds a perceived perf impact due to making the whole machine look unresponsive.
If you're interested in the actual execution time, why not time it for yourself and find out?
int parmIn = 10 * 1000 * 1000; // 10 million
int v1=0;
Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2;
}
sw.Stop();
double opsPerSec = (double)parmIn / sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
And, of course, the time for one iteration is 1/opsPerSec.
Whenever someone asks about how fast control structures in any language you know they are trying to optimize the wrong thing. If you find yourself changing all your i++ to ++i or changing all your switch to if...else for speed you are micro-optimizing. And micro optimizations almost never give you the speed you want. Instead, think a bit more about what you are really trying to do and devise a better way to do it.
I'm not sure if the code you posted is really what you intend to do or if it is simply the loop stripped down to what you think is causing the problem. If it is the former then what you are trying to do is find the largest value of a number that is smaller than another number. If this is really what you want then you don't really need a loop:
// assuming v1, parmIn and parmIn2 are integers,
// and you want the largest number (v1) that is
// smaller than parmIn but is a multiple of parmIn2.
// AGAIN, assuming INTEGER MATH:
v1 = (parmIn/parmIn2)*parmIn2;
EDIT: I just realized that the code as originally written gives the smallest number that is a multiple of parmIn2 that is larger than parmIn. So the correct code is:
v1 = ((parmIn/parmIn2)*parmIn2)+parmIn2;
If this is not what you really want then my advise remains the same: think a bit on what you are really trying to do (or ask on Stackoverflow) instead of trying to find out weather while or for is faster. Of course, you won't always find a mathematical solution to the problem. In which case there are other strategies to lower the number of loops taken. Here's one based on your current problem: keep doubling the incrementer until it is too large and then back off until it is just right:
int v1=0;
int incrementer=parmIn2;
// keep doubling the incrementer to
// speed up the loop:
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=incrementer;
incrementer=incrementer*2;
}
// now v1 is too big, back off
// and resume normal loop:
v1-=incrementer;
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2;
}
Here's yet another alternative that speeds up the loop:
// First count at 100x speed
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2*100;
}
// back off and count at 50x speed
v1-=parmIn2*100;
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2*50;
}
// back off and count at 10x speed
v1-=parmIn2*50;
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2*10;
}
// back off and count at normal speed
v1-=parmIn2*10;
while(v1 < parmIn) {
v1+=parmIn2;
}
In my experience, especially with graphics programming where you have millions of pixels or polygons to process, speeding up code usually involve adding even more code which translates to more processor instructions instead of trying to find the fewest instructions possible for the task at hand. The trick is to avoid processing what you don't have to.
I was working on some code recently and came across a method that had 3 for-loops that worked on 2 different arrays.
Basically, what was happening was a foreach loop would walk through a vector and convert a DateTime from an object, and then another foreach loop would convert a long value from an object. Each of these loops would store the converted value into lists.
The final loop would go through these two lists and store those values into yet another list because one final conversion needed to be done for the date.
Then after all that is said and done, The final two lists are converted to an array using ToArray().
Ok, bear with me, I'm finally getting to my question.
So, I decided to make a single for loop to replace the first two foreach loops and convert the values in one fell swoop (the third loop is quasi-necessary, although, I'm sure with some working I could also put it into the single loop).
But then I read the article "What your computer does while you wait" by Gustav Duarte and started thinking about memory management and what the data was doing while it's being accessed in the for-loop where two lists are being accessed simultaneously.
So my question is, what is the best approach for something like this? Try to condense the for-loops so it happens in as little loops as possible, causing multiple data access for the different lists. Or, allow the multiple loops and let the system bring in data it's anticipating. These lists and arrays can be potentially large and looping through 3 lists, perhaps 4 depending on how ToArray() is implemented, can get very costy (O(n^3) ??). But from what I understood in said article and from my CS classes, having to fetch data can be expensive too.
Would anyone like to provide any insight? Or have I completely gone off my rocker and need to relearn what I have unlearned?
Thank you
The best approach? Write the most readable code, work out its complexity, and work out if that's actually a problem.
If each of your loops is O(n), then you've still only got an O(n) operation.
Having said that, it does sound like a LINQ approach would be more readable... and quite possibly more efficient as well. Admittedly we haven't seen the code, but I suspect it's the kind of thing which is ideal for LINQ.
For referemce,
the article is at
What your computer does while you wait - Gustav Duarte
Also there's a guide to big-O notation.
It's impossible to answer the question without being able to see code/pseudocode. The only reliable answer is "use a profiler". Assuming what your loops are doing is a disservice to you and anyone who reads this question.
Well, you've got complications if the two vectors are of different sizes. As has already been pointed out, this doesn't increase the overall complexity of the issue, so I'd stick with the simplest code - which is probably 2 loops, rather than 1 loop with complicated test conditions re the two different lengths.
Actually, these length tests could easily make the two loops quicker than a single loop. You might also get better memory fetch performance with 2 loops - i.e. you are looking at contiguous memory - i.e. A[0],A[1],A[2]... B[0],B[1],B[2]..., rather than A[0],B[0],A[1],B[1],A[2],B[2]...
So in every way, I'd go with 2 separate loops ;-p
Am I understanding you correctly in this?
You have these loops:
for (...){
// Do A
}
for (...){
// Do B
}
for (...){
// Do C
}
And you converted it into
for (...){
// Do A
// Do B
}
for (...){
// Do C
}
and you're wondering which is faster?
If not, some pseudocode would be nice, so we could see what you meant. :)
Impossible to say. It could go either way. You're right, fetching data is expensive, but locality is also important. The first version may be better for data locality, but on the other hand, the second has bigger blocks with no branches, allowing more efficient instruction scheduling.
If the extra performance really matters (as Jon Skeet says, it probably doesn't, and you should pick whatever is most readable), you really need to measure both options, to see which is fastest.
My gut feeling says the second, with more work being done between jump instructions, would be more efficient, but it's just a hunch, and it can easily be wrong.
Aside from cache thrashing on large functions, there may be benefits on tiny functions as well. This applies on any auto-vectorizing compiler (not sure if Java JIT will do this yet, but you can count on it eventually).
Suppose this is your code:
// if this compiles down to a raw memory copy with a bitmask...
Date morningOf(Date d) { return Date(d.year, d.month, d.day, 0, 0, 0); }
Date timestamps[N];
Date mornings[N];
// ... then this can be parallelized using SSE or other SIMD instructions
for (int i = 0; i != N; ++i)
mornings[i] = morningOf(timestamps[i]);
// ... and this will just run like normal
for (int i = 0; i != N; ++i)
doOtherCrap(mornings[i]);
For large data sets, splitting the vectorizable code out into a separate loop can be a big win (provided caching doesn't become a problem). If it was all left as a single loop, no vectorization would occur.
This is something that Intel recommends in their C/C++ optimization manual, and it really can make a big difference.
... working on one piece of data but with two functions can sometimes make it so that code to act on that data doesn't fit in the processor's low level caches.
for(i=0, i<10, i++ ) {
myObject object = array[i];
myObject.functionreallybig1(); // pushes functionreallybig2 out of cache
myObject.functionreallybig2(); // pushes functionreallybig1 out of cache
}
vs
for(i=0, i<10, i++ ) {
myObject object = array[i];
myObject.functionreallybig1(); // this stays in the cache next time through loop
}
for(i=0, i<10, i++ ) {
myObject object = array[i];
myObject.functionreallybig2(); // this stays in the cache next time through loop
}
But it was probably a mistake (usually this type of trick is commented)
When data is cycicly loaded and unloaded like this, it is called cache thrashing, btw.
This is a seperate issue from the data these functions are working on, as typically the processor caches that separately.
I apologize for not responding sooner and providing any kind of code. I got sidetracked on my project and had to work on something else.
To answer anyone still monitoring this question;
Yes, like jalf said, the function is something like:
PrepareData(vectorA, VectorB, xArray, yArray):
listA
listB
foreach(value in vectorA)
convert values insert in listA
foreach(value in vectorB)
convert values insert in listB
listC
listD
for(int i = 0; i < listB.count; i++)
listC[i] = listB[i] converted to something
listD[i] = listA[i]
xArray = listC.ToArray()
yArray = listD.ToArray()
I changed it to:
PrepareData(vectorA, vectorB, ref xArray, ref yArray):
listA
listB
for(int i = 0; i < vectorA.count && vectorB.count; i++)
convert values insert in listA
convert values insert in listB
listC
listD
for(int i = 0; i < listB.count; i++)
listC[i] = listB[i] converted to something
listD[i] = listA[i]
xArray = listC.ToArray()
yArray = listD.ToArray()
Keeping in mind that the vectors can potentially have a large number of items. I figured the second one would be better, so that the program wouldnt't have to loop n times 2 or 3 different times. But then I started to wonder about the affects (effects?) of memory fetching, or prefetching, or what have you.
So, I hope this helps to clear up the question, although a good number of you have provided excellent answers.
Thank you every one for the information. Thinking in terms of Big-O and how to optimize has never been my strong point. I believe I am going to put the code back to the way it was, I should have trusted the way it was written before instead of jumping on my novice instincts. Also, in the future I will put more reference so everyone can understand what the heck I'm talking about (clarity is also not a strong point of mine :-/).
Thank you again.
I actually have an answer to my question but it is not parallelized so I am interested in ways to improve the algorithm. Anyway it might be useful as-is for some people.
int Until = 20000000;
BitArray PrimeBits = new BitArray(Until, true);
/*
* Sieve of Eratosthenes
* PrimeBits is a simple BitArray where all bit is an integer
* and we mark composite numbers as false
*/
PrimeBits.Set(0, false); // You don't actually need this, just
PrimeBits.Set(1, false); // remindig you that 2 is the smallest prime
for (int P = 2; P < (int)Math.Sqrt(Until) + 1; P++)
if (PrimeBits.Get(P))
// These are going to be the multiples of P if it is a prime
for (int PMultiply = P * 2; PMultiply < Until; PMultiply += P)
PrimeBits.Set(PMultiply, false);
// We use this to store the actual prime numbers
List<int> Primes = new List<int>();
for (int i = 2; i < Until; i++)
if (PrimeBits.Get(i))
Primes.Add(i);
Maybe I could use multiple BitArrays and BitArray.And() them together?
You might save some time by cross-referencing your bit array with a doubly-linked list, so you can more quickly advance to the next prime.
Also, in eliminating later composites once you hit a new prime p for the first time - the first composite multiple of p remaining will be p*p, since everything before that has already been eliminated. In fact, you only need to multiply p by all the remaining potential primes that are left after it in the list, stopping as soon as your product is out of range (larger than Until).
There are also some good probabilistic algorithms out there, such as the Miller-Rabin test. The wikipedia page is a good introduction.
Parallelisation aside, you don't want to be calculating sqrt(Until) on every iteration. You also can assume multiples of 2, 3 and 5 and only calculate for N%6 in {1,5} or N%30 in {1,7,11,13,17,19,23,29}.
You should be able to parallelize the factoring algorithm quite easily, since the Nth stage only depends on the sqrt(n)th result, so after a while there won't be any conflicts. But that's not a good algorithm, since it requires lots of division.
You should also be able to parallelize the sieve algorithms, if you have writer work packets which are guaranteed to complete before a read. Mostly the writers shouldn't conflict with the reader - at least once you've done a few entries, they should be working at least N above the reader, so you only need a synchronized read fairly occasionally (when N exceeds the last synchronized read value). You shouldn't need to synchronize the bool array across any number of writer threads, since write conflicts don't arise (at worst, more than one thread will write a true to the same place).
The main issue would be to ensure that any worker being waited on to write has completed. In C++ you'd use a compare-and-set to switch to the worker which is being waited for at any point. I'm not a C# wonk so don't know how to do it that language, but the Win32 InterlockedCompareExchange function should be available.
You also might try an actor based approach, since that way you can schedule the actors working with the lowest values, which may be easier to guarantee that you're reading valid parts of the the sieve without having to lock the bus on each increment of N.
Either way, you have to ensure that all workers have got above entry N before you read it, and the cost of doing that is where the trade-off between parallel and serial is made.
Without profiling we cannot tell which bit of the program needs optimizing.
If you were in a large system, then one would use a profiler to find that the prime number generator is the part that needs optimizing.
Profiling a loop with a dozen or so instructions in it is not usually worth while - the overhead of the profiler is significant compared to the loop body, and about the only ways to improve a loop that small is to change the algorithm to do fewer iterations. So IME, once you've eliminated any expensive functions and have a known target of a few lines of simple code, you're better off changing the algorithm and timing an end-to-end run than trying to improve the code by instruction level profiling.
#DrPizza Profiling only really helps improve an implementation, it doesn't reveal opportunities for parallel execution, or suggest better algorithms (unless you've experience to the otherwise, in which case I'd really like to see your profiler).
I've only single core machines at home, but ran a Java equivalent of your BitArray sieve, and a single threaded version of the inversion of the sieve - holding the marking primes in an array, and using a wheel to reduce the search space by a factor of five, then marking a bit array in increments of the wheel using each marking prime. It also reduces storage to O(sqrt(N)) instead of O(N), which helps both in terms of the largest N, paging, and bandwidth.
For medium values of N (1e8 to 1e12), the primes up to sqrt(N) can be found quite quickly, and after that you should be able to parallelise the subsequent search on the CPU quite easily. On my single core machine, the wheel approach finds primes up to 1e9 in 28s, whereas your sieve (after moving the sqrt out of the loop) takes 86s - the improvement is due to the wheel; the inversion means you can handle N larger than 2^32 but makes it slower. Code can be found here. You could parallelise the output of the results from the naive sieve after you go past sqrt(N) too, as the bit array is not modified after that point; but once you are dealing with N large enough for it to matter the array size is too big for ints.
You also should consider a possible change of algorithms.
Consider that it may be cheaper to simply add the elements to your list, as you find them.
Perhaps preallocating space for your list, will make it cheaper to build/populate.
Are you trying to find new primes? This may sound stupid, but you might be able to load up some sort of a data structure with known primes. I am sure someone out there has a list. It might be a much easier problem to find existing numbers that calculate new ones.
You might also look at Microsofts Parallel FX Library for making your existing code multi-threaded to take advantage of multi-core systems. With minimal code changes you can make you for loops multi-threaded.
There's a very good article about the Sieve of Eratosthenes: The Genuine Sieve of Eratosthenes
It's in a functional setting, but most of the opimization do also apply to a procedural implementation in C#.
The two most important optimizations are to start crossing out at P^2 instead of 2*P and to use a wheel for the next prime numbers.
For concurrency, you can process all numbers till P^2 in parallel to P without doing any unnecessary work.
void PrimeNumber(long number)
{
bool IsprimeNumber = true;
long value = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Sqrt(number));
if (number % 2 == 0)
{
IsprimeNumber = false;
MessageBox.Show("No It is not a Prime NUmber");
return;
}
for (long i = 3; i <= value; i=i+2)
{
if (number % i == 0)
{
MessageBox.Show("It is divisible by" + i);
IsprimeNumber = false;
break;
}
}
if (IsprimeNumber)
{
MessageBox.Show("Yes Prime NUmber");
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("No It is not a Prime NUmber");
}
}