Set the maximum number of threads in the Threadpool less than cores

"You cannot set the number of worker threads or the number of I/O completion threads to a number smaller than the number of processors in the computer." (Threadp开发者_如何学编程ool.SetMaxThreads)

What if I need to have less threads (I'm using a resource which does not support more than 4 threads from one process)? is there a way to set the maximum to 4 for an 8 core box? I'm using Tasks in C#.

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it seems you should try to limit the number of threads with access to that resource rather than the total number of threads this could be done by locking or tickets

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Yes, Microsoft has such requirement that number of thread cannot be smaller than the number of processors. More info here.

I am interested to know why does Microsoft have such requirement? It should be harmless isn't it ? This requirement does not make sense...

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just tried this out, and this "requirement" seems to be incorrect. i believe that it merely sets MinThreads to the # of cores in your machine by default. if i do this:

ThreadPool.SetMinThreads(1, 1);
ThreadPool.SetMaxThreads(2,2);

on a QuadCore machine, it seems to throttle the thread execution properly, if i leave out the SetMinThreads call though, it ignores my call to SetMaxThreads (since you cant set MaxThreads to less than MinThreads (which is # of cores by default))