The dispatch_apply() function provides data-level concurrency through a "for (;;)" loop like primitive:
dispatch_queue_t the_queue = dispatch_get_concurrent_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT);
size_t iterations = 10;
// 'idx' is zero indexed, just like:
// for (idx = 0; idx < iterations; idx++)
dispatch_apply(iterations, the_queue, ^(size_t idx) {
printf("%zu\n", idx);
});
Like a "for (;;)" loop, the dispatch_apply() function is synchronous. If asynchronous behavior is
desired, please wrap the call to dispatch_apply() with a call to dispatch_async() against another queue.
Sometimes, when the block passed to dispatch_apply() is simple, the use of striding can tune performance.
Calculating the optimal stride is best left to experimentation. Start with a stride of one and work
upwards until the desired performance is achieved (perhaps using a power of two search):
#define STRIDE 3
dispatch_apply(count / STRIDE, queue, ^(size_t idx) {
size_t j = idx * STRIDE;
size_t j_stop = j + STRIDE;
do {
printf("%zu\n", j++);
} while (j < j_stop);
});
size_t i;
for (i = count - (count % STRIDE); i < count; i++) {
printf("%zu\n", i);
}