WHITE PAPERS SPONSORED PROFILES JOB BOARD WEBINAR CENTER FREE SOFTWARE BZ RESEARCH ALMSHAREPOINT EVENTS CALENDAR PRINT/PDF EDITION PRINT/PDF BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL CALENDAR EDITORIAL BEATS GUEST VIEW GUIDE SD TIMES 100 GUIDE EVENTS CALENDAR ADVERTISING ARTICLE REPRINTS REPORT A BUG SITE MAP

ABOUT US BZ MEDIA NEWS BZ RESEARCH NEWS ON MONDAY SPTECHREPORT SPTECHWEB SPTECHCON IPHONE/IPAD DEVCON ANDROID DEVCON PRIVACY POLICY CONTACT US

HOME >> LATEST NEWS

Microsoft's shift to parallel computing

By David Worthington

August 1, 2008 — (Page 1 of 4)
Microsoft has embarked on a cross-company effort to transition to parallel computing. In that mission, it will attempt to soften the impact of those changes on developers.

Several groups within Microsoft are working on new technologies for multicore hardware architecture and concurrent computing scenarios, such as cloud computing.

The company’s developer division, the Robotics Group and an incubation group directed by chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie are among those participating in that effort. SD Times interviewed the executives from those groups to learn more about their work.

The goal of the developer division is to make concurrency easy for developers, said Lynne Hill, general manager of the division’s parallel programming group.

Its initial work revolves around creating a concurrency runtime that operates on top of Windows, as well as adding extensions and libraries to existing .NET programming languages. These create a common scheduling framework for developers.

The division released in June a community technology preview of the Parallel FX library, which includes Parallel Language Integrated Query (PLINQ), a concurrent query execution engine for LINQ and Task Parallel Library (TPL), which provides parallel extensions for the .NET Framework.

Hill explained that this permits developers to inject parallelism into applications using models that they are already familiar with, but noted that developers should recognize when a particular problem might lend itself to parallelism.

Microsoft’s long-term intention is to integrate extensions for parallelism into .NET languages, she said. “The advantage of starting out with a library is to gather feedback; it makes modifications easier,” she added.

The company’s research labs are investigating new languages that are purposed for parallelism, including a functional language called F#. Hill noted that each developer can have a different requirement from a language, and that one language alone is not sufficient.

“Most of the problem is not the OS. Most of the activity lays in programming lines and implementations of those languages,” commented Microsoft technical fellow Burton Smith. “The major changes visible to people will be in languages and the [resulting] implementations.”

Related Search Term(s): cloud computing, multicore, Microsoft

Pages 1 2 3 4

Share this link: http://sdt.bz/32651

Most Read Latest News Blog Resources

Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers

ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists

Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles

Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.

The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...

Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...

Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...

Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...

Technorati

Digg

Slashdot

Facebook

Friendfeed

Twitter

del.icio.us

Cloud computing is green computing Despite advances made in efficient power consumption, cloud's scalability is the best way to cut down on energy use

Look what 2011 washed in: Microsoft's cloud foundation Microsoft has pushed forward with its cloud strategy ahead of Windows 8

Open Cloud Initiative envisions an open cloud future Vendor lock-in is a hidden danger, so principles must be established to protect users

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment

Cloud computing is green computing
Despite advances made in efficient power consumption, cloud's scalability is the best way to cut down on energy use Read More...

News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>

Download Current Issue
FEBRUARY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
02/09/2012 02:16 PM EST

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
02/07/2012 11:57 AM EST

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
02/04/2012 01:57 PM EST

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
02/03/2012 12:17 PM EST

Facebook claims hacker cred
Facebook's SEC S-1 filing form includes a short essay on the Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
02/02/2012 08:26 AM EST

Ryan Dahl steps down
Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js, steps back from his position as gatekeeper for the project.
02/01/2012 04:58 PM EST