The async routines only need two bytes of overhead and — unlike proper threads — don’t need a preallocated private stack. Here’s a simple example from the project’s GitHub: ...

Note that prior to .Net Framework 4.5 you have had to specify “Asynchronous Processing=true” in your connection string to leverage asynchronous ADO.Net calls.

Since a lot of SMP runs out of gas around four or eight processors, it’s also not necessarily the primary wave of the future, unless better multithreading software comes out. There are many more ...