ProcessThread.ProcessorAffinity Property

Definition

Sets the processors on which the associated thread can run.

[System.Runtime.Versioning.SupportedOSPlatform("windows")]
public IntPtr ProcessorAffinity { set; }
public IntPtr ProcessorAffinity { set; }
[System.ComponentModel.Browsable(false)]
public IntPtr ProcessorAffinity { set; }

Property Value

IntPtr

An IntPtr that points to a set of bits, each of which represents a processor that the thread can run on.

Attributes

Exceptions

The processor affinity could not be set.

The process is on a remote computer.

Examples

The following example shows how to set the ProcessorAffinity property for an instance of Notepad to the first processor.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ProcessThreadIdealProcessor
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Make sure there is an instance of notepad running.
            Process[] notepads = Process.GetProcessesByName("notepad");
            if (notepads.Length == 0)
                Process.Start("notepad");
            ProcessThreadCollection threads;
            //Process[] notepads;
            // Retrieve the Notepad processes.
            notepads = Process.GetProcessesByName("Notepad");
            // Get the ProcessThread collection for the first instance
            threads = notepads[0].Threads;
            // Set the properties on the first ProcessThread in the collection
            threads[0].IdealProcessor = 0;
            threads[0].ProcessorAffinity = (IntPtr)1;
        }
    }
}

Remarks

The processor affinity of a thread is the set of processors it has a relationship to. In other words, those it can be scheduled to run on.

ProcessorAffinity represents each processor as a bit. Bit 0 represents processor one, bit 1 represents processor two, and so on. The following table shows a subset of the possible ProcessorAffinity for a four-processor system.

Property value (in hexadecimal) Valid processors
0x0001 1
0x0002 2
0x0003 1 or 2
0x0004 3
0x0005 1 or 3
0x0007 1, 2, or 3
0x000F 1, 2, 3, or 4

You can also specify the single, preferred processor for a thread by setting the IdealProcessor property. A process thread can migrate from processor to processor, with each migration reloading the processor cache. Specifying a processor for a thread can improve performance under heavy system loads by reducing the number of times the processor cache is reloaded.

Applies to

Product Versions
.NET Core 1.0, Core 1.1, Core 2.0, Core 2.1, Core 2.2, Core 3.0, Core 3.1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
.NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8, 4.8.1
.NET Standard 2.0, 2.1

See also