Question

I’m trying to understand when the System.Timers.Timer raises the elapsed event, is it raised in an independent thread?

My example below seems to suggest that the three timers run independently in their own threads:

class Program
{
    static System.Timers.Timer timer = new System.Timers.Timer();
    static System.Timers.Timer timer2 = new System.Timers.Timer();
    static System.Timers.Timer timer3 = new System.Timers.Timer();

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        timer.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(
            timer_Elapsed);
        timer2.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(
            timer2_Elapsed);
        timer3.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(
            timer3_Elapsed);

        timer.Interval = 1000;
        timer2.Interval = 1000;
        timer3.Interval = 1000;

        timer.Start();
        timer2.Start();
        timer3.Start();

        Console.WriteLine("Press \'q\' to quit the sample.");
        while (Console.Read() != 'q') ;
    }

    static void timer3_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        timer3.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("Timer 3 Hit...");            
        timer3.Start();
    }

    static void timer2_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        timer2.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("Timer 2 Hit...");
        Thread.Sleep(2000);
        timer2.Start();
    }

    static void timer_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        timer.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("Timer 1 Hit...");
        Thread.Sleep(10000);
        timer.Start();
    }
}

Answer 1

According to the MSDN, on System.Timers.Timer when the Elapsed event fires it is called on a thread in the system thread-pool:

If the SynchronizingObject property is Nothing, the Elapsed event is raised on a ThreadPool thread. If processing of the Elapsed event lasts longer than Interval, the event might be raised again on another ThreadPool thread. In this situation, the event handler should be reentrant.

Since the default value of SynchronizingObject is null, then all your elapsed events would be handled on the thread pool. So, it depends how full the thread pool is, if there are free threads, then each elapsed event can most likely run concurrently on separate threads. If for some reason, though, the system thread-pool is already fully in use, it’s possible the elapsed events could be serialized as they are scheduled.

The main point is: “it depends.” That is, they will be allowed to run in parallel as long as there are free threads in the pool.

Reference: MSDN on System.Timers.Timer