CCR - Concurrency and Coordination Runtime for asynchronous processing
The Microsoft Robotics Studio ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/ ), which was recently released, has a unique set of assemblies called Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR). The CCR.Core assembly is only 154KB. Unfortunately, the only way you can get it (currently) is to download and install the entire April 2007 CTP: ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=71D96DE4-E3D9-496E-B48E-B35697C88FF1&displaylang=en ) -- at 54.3 MB. The central feature of the CCR is that it makes programming asynchronous behavior much simpler than the typical challenge of writing threaded code. When an application's thread performs synchronous I/O requests, the application is giving up control of the thread's processing to the I/O device (a hard drive, a network, etc.). The application's responsiveness then becomes unpredictable. When threads are suspended waiting for I/O requests to complete, the application tends to create more threads in an attempt to accomplish mo...