What does MaxDegreeOfParallelism do?

The answer is that it is the upper limit for the entire parallel operation, irrespective of the number of cores.

So even if you don’t use the CPU because you are waiting on IO, or a lock, no extra tasks will run in parallel, only the maximum that you specifiy.

To find this out, I wrote this piece of test code. There is an artificial lock in there to stimulate the TPL to use more threads. The same will happen when your code is waiting for IO or database.

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var locker = new Object();
        int count = 0;
        Parallel.For
            (0
             , 1000
             , new ParallelOptions { MaxDegreeOfParallelism = 2 }
             , (i) =>
                   {
                       Interlocked.Increment(ref count);
                       lock (locker)
                       {
                           Console.WriteLine("Number of active threads:" + count);
                           Thread.Sleep(10);
                        }
                        Interlocked.Decrement(ref count);
                    }
            );
    }
}

If I don’t specify MaxDegreeOfParallelism, the console logging shows that up to around 8 tasks are running at the same time. Like this:

Number of active threads:6
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:6
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7
Number of active threads:7

It starts lower, increases over time and at the end it is trying to run 8 at the same time.

If I limit it to some arbitrary value (say 2), I get

Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:1
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2
Number of active threads:2

Oh, and this is on a quadcore machine.