Counting bits set in a .Net BitArray Class

Question

I am implementing a library where I am extensively using the .Net BitArray class and need an equivalent to the Java BitSet.Cardinality() method, i.e. a method which returns the number of bits set. I was thinking of implementing it as an extension method for the BitArray class. The trivial implementation is to iterate and count the bits set (like below), but I wanted a faster implementation as I would be performing thousands of set operations and counting the answer. Is there a faster way than the example below?

count = 0;

for (int i = 0; i < mybitarray.Length; i++)
{

  if (mybitarray [i])
    count++;
}

Answer 1

This is my solution based on the "best bit counting method" from http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#CountBitsSetParallel

public static Int32 GetCardinality(BitArray bitArray)
{

    Int32[] ints = new Int32[(bitArray.Count >> 5) + 1];

    bitArray.CopyTo(ints, 0);

    Int32 count = 0;

    // fix for not truncated bits in last integer that may have been set to true with SetAll()
    ints[ints.Length - 1] &= ~(-1 << (bitArray.Count % 32));

    for (Int32 i = 0; i < ints.Length; i++)
    {

        Int32 c = ints[i];

        // magic (http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#CountBitsSetParallel)
        unchecked
        {
        c = c - ((c >> 1) & 0x55555555);
        c = (c & 0x33333333) + ((c >> 2) & 0x33333333);
        c = ((c + (c >> 4) & 0xF0F0F0F) * 0x1010101) >> 24;
        }

        count += c;

    }

    return count;

}

According to my tests, this is around 60 times faster than the simple foreach loop and still 30 times faster than the Kernighan approach with around 50% bits set to true in a BitArray with 1000 bits. I also have a VB version of this if needed.