Monthly Meeting - Parallel Extensions for the .NET Framework (PFX), Mike Collins

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1) Parallel Extensions for the .NET Framework (PFX), Mike Collins

Session 1: Parallel Extensions for the .NET Framework
Presented by: Mike Collins

Future improvements in hardware processing power are proceeding on a new model. Instead of deriving processing power from scaling clock speed, which eventually increases power usage and heat emission to unmanageable levels, chip manufacturers have begun to increase overall processing power by adding additional CPUs, or “cores” to the microprocessor package.

In general, a “multi-core” chip refers to eight or less homogeneous cores in one microprocessor package, whereas a “manycore” chip has more than eight possibly heterogeneous cores in one microprocessor package.

Manycore systems hold the promise of delivering 10 to100 times the processing power in the next few years. Developing applications that harness the full power of manycore systems is difficult and requires software developers to transition from writing serial programs to writing parallel programs.

The combination of manycore hardware with parallel computing enabled by system, platform, and tools will result in compelling new experiences: natural language, computer vision, sophisticated image analysis and manipulation, semantic analysis of data, and rendering and simulation with movie-style realism.

In this talk we will look at the Parallel Extensions for the .NET framework (PFX) which includes Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) and the Task Parallel Library (TPL) to see how we can more easily take advantage of what Microsoft refers to as the ManyCore Shift. To better visualize the potential performance increases we will look at some example code that implements ray-tracing and fractal generation along with some other samples.

Downloads: Available after the presentation.

About Mike Collins

Mike has 25 years of experience developing software. Over 10 of those years were spent in an R&D lab developing simulation software and the last 15 were spent developing commercial storage management software at IBM.

Mike has a Bachelor of Science, Liberal Arts from Regents College and a Master of Science, Computer Science from New Mexico State University. Mike’s two graduate research projects were a port of an X Window server to a PC supporting low bandwidth connections, and an Intelligent (AI) Tutoring system to help teach Denotational Semantics. Mike became a member of the Windows NT beta program while working on his X Window server project and later joined IBM specifically to port the Tivoli Storage Manager server to Windows.

Mike led the development of the Windows TSM server for eight years, designed and wrote the initial versions of the TSM SQL Server and Exchange backup clients, the MMC based TSM management console and TSM operational reporting. Mike moved to the storage product architecture team for a couple of years and then on to the software advanced technology group where he is currently a senior storage software architect.  While most of his work at IBM is in C/C++/Java Mike has had a strong personal interest in .NET since the first bits were available. 

Mike has a passion for software development, cutting edge technology, and sharing what he's learned with others. Mike is also the leader of the Tucson .NET User group.

Mike enjoys spending time with his family, digital photography, music, and is an avid mountain bike rider - let him know if you're up for a ride!


All expressed ideas and comments are purely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.