Difference between Barrier in C# 4.0 and WaitHandle in C# 3.0?
.net, .net-4.0, c#, multithreading
Solution
It sounds like you are curious as to why a Barrier would be preferred over a WaitHandle + WaitForAll derivative? Both can achieve a similar goal if structured properly.
I'm not extremely familiar with Barrier but one advantage that jumps out at me is a resource issue. To synchronize N threads with a Barrier requires only a single Barrier instance. To synchronize N threads via a WaitHandle and WaitAll requires N handles. These resources are cheap but not free. Reducing the number of resources to synchronize a group of threads has it's advantages.
Problem
I am picking up C# 4.0 and one of the things which is confusing me, is the barrier concept. Is this not just like using the `WaitAll` method of `WaitHandle`? Doesn't that wait for all threads to finish? I learnt the barrier construct from this page: http://www.managed-world.com/archive/2009/02/09/an-intro-to-barrier.aspx However, it seems just like the `WaitAll` method. What am I missing? What's the difference here? Thanks.