High Contention (Processors)

This is a variant of High Contention pattern for processors where we have more threads at the same priority than the available processors. All these threads share the same notification event (or any other similar synchronization mechanism) and rush once it is signalled. If this happens often the system becomes sluggish or even appears frozen.

0: kd> !running

System Processors 3 (affinity mask)
  Idle Processors 0

Prcbs  Current   Next
  0    ffdff120  89a92020            O...............
  1    f7737120  89275020            W...............

0: kd> !ready
Processor 0: Ready Threads at priority 8
     THREAD 894a1db0  Cid 1a98.25c0  Teb: 7ffde000 Win32Thread: bc19cea8 READY
     THREAD 897c4818  Cid 11d8.1c5c  Teb: 7ffa2000 Win32Thread: bc2c5ba8 READY
     THREAD 8911fd18  Cid 2730.03f4  Teb: 7ffd9000 Win32Thread: bc305830 READY
Processor 1: Ready Threads at priority 8
     THREAD 89d89db0  Cid 1b10.20ac  Teb: 7ffd7000 Win32Thread: bc16e680 READY
     THREAD 891f24a8  Cid 1e2c.20d0  Teb: 7ffda000 Win32Thread: bc1b9ea8 READY
     THREAD 89214db0  Cid 1e2c.24d4  Teb: 7ffd7000 Win32Thread: bc24ed48 READY
     THREAD 89a28020  Cid 1b10.21b4  Teb: 7ffa7000 Win32Thread: bc25b3b8 READY
     THREAD 891e03b0  Cid 1a98.05c4  Teb: 7ffdb000 Win32Thread: bc228bb0 READY
     THREAD 891b0020  Cid 1cd0.0144  Teb: 7ffde000 Win32Thread: bc205ea8 READY