This is the first part of the Concurrency series. For your convenience you can find other parts using the links below:
Part 1 — Mutex performance in .NET
Part 2 — Java file lock
Part 3 — Java mutex via JNI
Part 4 — .NET with P/Invoke
Part 5 — WinAPI mutex
Part 6 — Abandoned mutex
Part 7 — Semaphores trickery
Part 8 — Tracking mutex owner
Part 9 — Semaphores with custom locks
Part 10 — Reentrant mutex

This is the first part of the Concurrency series in which I explore performance of various locking mechanisms. Once working on a pet project I started wondering how fast is a system wide lock in Windows so I decided to run few simple “benchmarks” just to get the general idea.

The benchmarks are deliberately done this way so I can compare different languages in the same manner. Do not take results for granted, do not consider them reliable.

First I explore WinAPI Mutex called from C#.

Code

Here is the code:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;

namespace MutexDotnet
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var mutex = new Mutex(false, "mutexName");
            Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch();

            while (true)
            {
                watch.Restart();
                for(int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i)
                {
                    mutex.WaitOne();
                    mutex.ReleaseMutex();
                }
                watch.Stop();
                Console.WriteLine(watch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            }
        }
    }
}

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

using System.Threading;

namespace MutexDotnet

{

class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

var mutex = new Mutex(false, "mutexName");

Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch();

while (true)

{

watch.Restart();

for(int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i)

{

mutex.WaitOne();

mutex.ReleaseMutex();

}

watch.Stop();

Console.WriteLine(watch.ElapsedMilliseconds);

}

Nothing special, just a named mutex and stopwatch. I try to measure the time to acquire mutex 100 thousand times.

Results

Here are the results:

$\begin{array}{cc} Number\ of\ processes & Time [ms] \\ 1 & 140\\ 2 & 750\\ 3 & 1180\\ 4 & 1530\\ 5 & 2022\\ 6 & 2446\\ 7 & 2871\\ 8 & 3361\\ 9 & 3835\\ 10 & 4268\\ \end{array}$

As we can see, to acquire mutex given number of times with 10 processes trying to do that concurrently we need over 4 seconds which gives 0.04 ms for single acquire + release.

In next parts we will see different mechanisms, their performance and quirks.