The System.Threading.Channels namespace provides data structures (stores) for pub/sub scenarios. It enables you to decouple one-to-many publishers from one-to-many subscribers just as its equally named counterpart from go.

At first glance, this might look similar to the functionality provided by BufferBlock<T> from System.Threading.Task.Dataflow . Channels , however, are a more low-level primitive upon which libraries such as Dataflow can be built. If Dataflow was still in development today, it would most certainly be based on Channels to some extent.

Bounded vs. Unbounded Channels

Channels are created using the static factory methods of the Channel class. The type parameter T is used to identify the type of object that can be passed from a publisher to a subscriber via the created Channel .

public static Channel < T > CreateBounded < T > ( int capacity ) { } public static Channel < T > CreateBounded < T > ( BoundedChannelOptions options ) { } public static Channel < T > CreateUnbounded < T > ( ) { } public static Channel < T > CreateUnbounded < T > ( UnboundedChannelOptions options ) { }

Using CreateUnbounded creates a channel that can accept an infinite amount of messages - given an endless amount of memory of course. The unbounded channel variant is more performant than its bounded counterpart in almost every benchmark (see below). This win in performance comes at the cost of potentially running out of memory. If you can externally guarantee, that the channel never contains more then a certain amount of pending objects, using an unbounded channel is profitable. Otherwise, it is more secure to rely on bounded channels.

Bounded channels operate in one of four FullMode s, which can be set via the options parameter to the CreateBounded factory method.

Channel . CreateBounded < T > ( new BoundedChannelOptions ( capacity ) { FullMode = BoundedChannelFullMode . Wait } ) ;

The four supported FullMode s are:

Wait - Wait for space to be available in order to complete the write operation.

- Wait for space to be available in order to complete the write operation. DropNewest - Remove and ignore the newest item in the channel in order to make room for the item being written.

- Remove and ignore the newest item in the channel in order to make room for the item being written. DropOldest - Remove and ignore the oldest item in the channel in order to make room for the item being written.

- Remove and ignore the oldest item in the channel in order to make room for the item being written. DropWrite - Drop the item being written.

Be aware that the most convenient option Wait might also cause memory issues, as each asynchronously ‘waiting’ producer requires memory as well.

Publisher / Subscriber cardinality

Channels are assumingly used to coordinate one publisher with the computing power of multiple subscribers, or to fit the work of multiple producers through the bottleneck of a single consumer. It is however also possible to model multi-publisher / multi-subscriber or single-publisher / single-subscriber scenarios using channels.

To notify the factory methods of the specific scenario at hand, two properties on both the Unbounded - and the BoundedChannelOptions can be set accordingly.

Channel . CreateUnbounded < T > ( new UnboundedChannelOptions ( ) { SingleWriter = false , SingleReader = true } ) ;

The documentation for those two properties indicates, that specific optimizations may be unlocked if the channel knowns about the single-reader or single-writer guarantee. This information is currently used to determine the appropriate Channel implementation for the given circumstances. The CoreFX repository contains three implementations of the abstract Channel<T> class; a bounded Channel, a single-reader and a multi-reader unbounded channel. Unless specifying a single-consumer scenario to the unbounded channel factory, there is currently no effect in setting those properties. It is nevertheless considered best-practice, as more optimizations might be added in the future.

Synchronous Continuations

You may have heard of TaskCreationOptions.RunContinuationsAsynchronously which was added in .NET Framework 4.6. It forces continuations of tasks to be executed asynchronously (e.g., on the thread pool). The critical thing to note here is that this behavior is not the default. In other words, continuations are executed synchronously per default by the thread that provides the result of a task (e.g., executes TrySetResult on the TaskCompletionSource ). Synchronous execution typically helps with performance but may trigger nasty deadlocks, as developers may not be aware of which thread is executing the continuations.

With Channels , this default changed. Not globally of course, but for continuations registered inside the Channel . Asynchronous execution ensures, that a producer thread does not end up doing consumer work when executing a continuation synchronously. If you are sure, that this added safety is not necessary in your specific use case, it can be turned off using another boolean property in the Channel s options, which defaults to false. Doing so most likely increases throughput but reduces concurrency.

Channel . CreateUnbounded < T > ( new UnboundedChannelOptions ( ) { AllowSynchronousContinuations = true } ) ;

Interacting with Channels

Channel (much as the IDuplexPipe interface from System.IO.Pipelines ) exposes two properties. A ChannelReader and a ChannelWriter .

Channel < T > channel = Channel . CreateUnbounded < T > ( ) ; ChannelReader < T > reader = channel . Reader ; ChannelWriter < T > writer = channel . Writer ;

The ChannelReader and the ChannelWriter feature a very symmetrical API (optional parameters removed for brevity):

ChannelReader ChannelWriter bool TryRead(out T item) bool TryWrite(T item) ValueTask<T> ReadAsync() ValueTask WriteAsync(T item) ValueTask<bool> WaitToReadAsync() ValueTask<bool> WaitToWriteAsync() Task Completion bool TryComplete() , void Complete()

It is obvious that the ChannelWriter can be used to write (publish) objects to the Channel , whereas the ChannelReader can be used to read (consume) them. It is also obvious that the writing side is in control of the completion of the Channel , while the readers can only observe the writers decision (e.g., via the Completion Task that completes, when the channel completes).

TryRead / TryWrite

These synchronous methods may be used to optimistically and synchronously read from or write to a Channel . (Note that writing synchronously to an unbounded Channel always succeeds unless the channel is closed.) This is typically used to avoid going asynchronous via the following pattern:

public ValueTask PublishAsync ( T item ) { async Task AsyncSlowPath ( T thing ) { await channel . WriteAsync ( thing ) ; } return channel . TryWrite ( item ) ? default : new ValueTask ( AsyncSlowPath ( item ) ) ; }

ReadAsync / WriteAsync

As indicated above, those two methods are the asynchronous counterparts to TryRead and TryWrite . The critical thing to note here is that both methods throw a ChannelClosedException (possibly containing an inner exception if one was passed as a parameter to TryComplete or Complete ) if the Channel is completed during the operation. If you can live with a try / catch -block or externally guarantee, that the channel will not be completed during reads or writes, these two methods are for you. Otherwise, the next pair of methods offers an elegant alternative.

WaitToReadAsync / WaitToWriteAsync

WaitToReadAsync and WaitToWriteAsyn allow you to wait asynchronously until the Channel becomes readable/writable again. Note, that there is no guarantee, that the Channel will stay readable/writable, until you acutally read from / write to it. Both methods will not throw an exception if the channel is completed during the operation (unless you provide an exception to TryComplete or Complete, see below). In this case, they will simply return false. An appropriate usage pattern may be the following. In the case of an exception, it will not be wrapped in a ChannelClosedException (as with ReadAsync / WriteAsync ) but thrown directly.

public ValueTask < bool > PublishAsync ( T item ) { async Task < bool > AsyncSlowPath ( T thing ) { while ( await channel . WaitToWriteAsync ( ) ) { if ( channel . TryWrite ( thing ) ) return true ; } return false ; } return channel . TryWrite ( item ) ? new ValueTask < bool > ( true ) : new ValueTask < bool > ( AsyncSlowPath ( item ) ) ; }

Note that TryWrite is now executed in a while-loop, as the Channel may no longer be writeable once we get to actually writing to it.

Completion / TryComplete / Complete

On the reader side, Completion can be used to execute code after the channel has been completed. This can be achieved by either awaiting the Task or by registering a continuation using ContinueWith . Another option for the reader is to query whether the channel is still active by calling !channel.Completion.IsCompleted . Note however that this information might already be outdated, one queried.

As already mentioned, the writing side is in control of Channel completion. Publishers can call TryComplete or Complete without parameter to indicate normal completion, or pass in an Exception to indicate completion due to an error. The only difference between TryComplete and Complete is that the latter will throw a ChannelClosedException if the channel is already closed, while to former will just return false in this case.

Usage patterns

The following text and usage patterns were taken from or inspired by the partially outdated REDAME from Stephen Toub. I took the liberty of updating them as the API has slightly changed since its corefxlab days.

Producer patterns

The simplest way to produce a bunch of numbers and complete might look like this:

private static async Task ProduceRange ( ChannelWriter < int > c , int count ) { for ( int i = 0 ; i < count ; i ++ ) { await c . WriteAsync ( i ) ; } c . Complete ( ) ; }

If the Channel is expected to be unbounded or the need to wait unlikely, the loop may be optimized using TryWrite as indicated earlier:

private static async Task ProduceRange ( ChannelWriter < int > c , int count ) { for ( int i = 0 ; i < count ; i ++ ) { if ( c . TryWrite ( i ) ) continue ; await c . WriteAsync ( i ) ; } c . Complete ( ) ; }

If returning a ValueTask is an option, going async can be avoided altogether if all writes complete synchronously with:

private static ValueTask ProduceRange ( ChannelWriter < int > c , int count ) { for ( int i = 0 ; i < count ; i ++ ) { if ( c . TryWrite ( i ) ) continue ; return new ValueTask ( FinishProducingRange ( c , i , count ) ) ; } c . Complete ( ) ; return default ; } private static async Task FinishProducingRangeAsync ( ChannelWriter < int > c , int current , int count ) { for ( int i = current ; i < count ; i ++ ) { await c . WriteAsync ( i ) ; } c . Complete ( ) ; }

If you are uncertain, whether the Channel may be closed during the operation, the following pattern provides a more secure approach:

private static async Task ProduceRange ( ChannelWriter < int > c , int count ) { for ( int i = 0 ; i < count ; i ++ ) { while ( await c . WaitForWriteAsync ( ) ) { if ( c . TryWrite ( i ) ) break ; } } c . Complete ( ) ; }

And if it’s expected that most writers will succeed synchronously, it may be advantageous to also loop on the TryWrite , e.g:

private static async Task ProduceRange ( ChannelWriter < int > c , int count ) { int i = 0 ; while ( i < count && await c . WaitForWriteAsync ( ) ) { while ( i < count && c . TryWrite ( i ) ) i ++ ; } c . Complete ( ) ; }

The implementation of the variant that may return synchronously without allocating a Task is left as an exercise to the reader.

Consumer patterns

On the consuming end, there are similarly multiple ways to consume a channel. Which one is chosen will depend on the exact needs of the situation. A simple read-loop may look like this:

private static async Task Consume ( ChannelReader < int > c ) { try { while ( true ) { int item = await c . ReadAsync ( ) ; } } catch ( ChannelClosedException ) { } }

WaitForReadAsync and TryRead may also be used. This avoids the use of an exception to indicate if/when the channel has been closed, e.g.

private static async Task Consume ( ChannelReader < int > c ) { while ( await c . WaitForReadAsync ( ) ) { if ( c . TryRead ( out int item ) ) { } } }

As with the writing example, if it’s expected that waiting is relatively rare, a nested loop can be used to optimize for reads by looping over TryRead as well:

private static async Task Consume ( ChannelReader < int > c ) { while ( await c . WaitForReadAsync ( ) ) { while ( c . TryRead ( out int item ) ) { .. . } } }

Summary

System.Threading.Channels is a highly versatile library to orchestrate pub/sub scenarios in the .NET universe asynchronously. It is fast enough, to dispatch well over 20 million messages in under a second and does not block any thread while doing so. It’s blocking community counterpart Disruptor-net is faster in some scenarios (compare the benchmarks below with their performance results). I am currently using Channels to sequence the writes of multiple producers to a single PipeWriter (from System.IO.Pipelines ), avoiding some calls to pipeWriter.FlushAsync if channel.TryRead returns true multiple times.

Benchmarks

The source code for the benchmark for reproduction can be found here. Be aware, that the Bounded channel was sized to be able to store all messages. If the channel were undersized, the benchmarks scores would look much worse.

Multi-Publisher / Multi-Subscriber

Type SyncCont. Mean (ms) Error (ms) StdDev (ms) Million messages / sec BoundedWait False 46.40 0.8731 0.8167 21.55 BoundedWait True 45.22 0.4662 0.4361 22.11 Unbounded False 41.07 0.2820 0.2638 24.35 Unbounded True 42.13 0.3960 0.3704 23.74

Multi-Publisher / Single-Subscriber

Type SyncCont. Mean (ms) Error (ms) StdDev (ms) Million messages / sec BoundedWait False 44.86 0.3109 0.2756 22.29 BoundedWait True 44.33 0.4621 0.4323 22.56 Unbounded False 29.80 0.5915 0.6329 33.55 Unbounded True 28.77 0.4965 0.4644 34.76

Single-Publisher / Multi-Subscriber

Type SyncCont. Mean (ms) Error (ms) StdDev (ms) Million messages / sec BoundedWait False 45.43 0.7245 0.6777 22.01 BoundedWait True 45.40 0.4925 0.4366 22.03 Unbounded False 41.81 0.2038 0.1907 23.92 Unbounded True 42.90 0.2406 0.2251 23.31

Single-Publisher / Single-Subscriber