14 DAY TRIAL // Developers looking to take advantage of all the horsepower that modern computing architectures have to offer will need to build their software in accordance with parallelism principles. However, devs also know that leveraging parallel computing in mainstream development hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park, taking into consideration Microsoft’s developer resources. But, since the release of its latest iteration of the development platform and tools, the Redmond company has made it easier for devs to put together parallel applications designed to run on top of Windows. The software giant is also offering additional resources set up to simplify app development for parallel computing.
“Parallel Computing Developer Center on MSDN is now live. The new site provides a more guided experience, helping developers to find content appropriate to your needs. You’ll find sections on Getting Started with Parallel Computing and a code gallery at Updated .NET Parallel Programming Samples and links to videos. The content on the site is now almost entirely RSS-driven. So you’ll be able to keep up to date as new content is developed,” revealed Bruce D. Kyle, ISV architect evangelist with Microsoft.
Parallel computing undoubtedly represents the future, in Microsoft’s perspective, but not only; however, in order for customers to fully enjoy all its benefits, hardware manufacturers and software developers need to be perfectly aligned. As far as the Redmond company is concerned, it too plays a critical role in the equation, as it is its Windows operating system that acts as the tier between hardware and software. But on top of this, Microsoft is also the provider of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, both critical resources that will usher in the new era of parallel applications.
“Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many operations are carried out simultaneously. Visual Studio 2010, the .NET Framework 4, and Visual C++ 2010 all contain new support for writing, debugging, and tuning parallel applications,” Microsoft explained.
Early adopters can already start testing Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. As of the most recent development milestone of the two technologies, namely the Beta 2 release, developers can take full advantage of the releases as they come with go-live licenses.
.NET Framework 4 Beta 2 is available for download here.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 are available for download via this link.