In this demo we showcase efforts in MSR to collaborate with external researchers to explore the application of new technologies, specifically Dryad and DryadLINQ, to big data research problems in science. We also highlight our efforts to provide software and services to academics across the world, through the release of Dryad and DryadLINQ free of charge to the research community, along with associated programming guides, user documentation, and code libraries. Dryad is a general-purpose distributed computing engine, more flexible than MapReduce or Hadoop!, that was designed to simplify the task of implementing distributed applications on clusters of Windows computers. DryadLINQ is an abstraction layer which simplifies the process of implementing Dryad-based applications. Microsoft Research is acutely aware of the ubiquity of big data and the challenges this presents. We are offering researchers the tools, resources and collaboration to explore this new area.
DryadLINQ
Multi-Core and Parallel Programming Practices
In case you haven’t realized it, the new trend in computer chip technology is multi-core. This is where most of the speed improvements moving forward will come from on our computers. To take full advantage of this however it is necessary to design your applications using Parallel Programming practices, also known as “parallelism”.
In today’s episode, we will meet with Stephen Toub, who will share with us some of the overarching concepts associated with parallelism, and some of the ways we are trying to empower developers to develop applications to take advantage of it.
You may also want to check out Stephen’s presentation from PDC09 on this topic here:
And here is the full set of PDC09 sessions related to parallel programming practices:
Overview:
Managed code in Visual Studio 2010:
- Manycore and .NET 4: A Match Made in Visual Studio 2010
- PLINQ: LINQ, but Faster!
- F# for Parallel and Asynchronous Programming
Native code in Visual Studio 2010:
- C++ Forever: Interactive Applications in the Age of Manycore
- Lighting up Windows Server 2008 R2 Using the ConcRT on UMS
- Developing Applications for Scale-Up Servers Running Windows Server 2008 R2
HPC Server:
Research and Incubation:
- Axum: A .NET Language for Safe and Scalable Concurrency
- Concurrency Fuzzing & Data Races
- Data-Intensive Computing on Windows HPC Server with DryadLINQ
- Rx: Reactive Extensions for .NET
- Future of Garbage Collection
- Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic
Channel 9 Live at PDC09: Stephen Toub
Channel 9 Live at PDC09: Stephen Toub with Charles Torre
Recorded Live, November 19th 2009 at 11:30AM (PST)
Click here for full schedule
Wes Dyer: Controlling Concurrency in Rx
The Rx team has received a lot of questions about Rx and concurrency, thread-affinity, timers and performance. In this video, Wes explains the major changes in the latest release of Rx.
These changes drastically improve the user experience. Your feedback inspired the future direction of Rx.
New bits can be found on the Rx DevLabs page
Author: Hi, I am Daniel Moth 
Introduction:
This screencasts covers the new Parallel Tasks and Parallel Stacks debugging windows in Visual Studio 2010.
It demonstrates the sample code from the MSDN Magazine on this topic which you can read here:
Debugging Task-Based Parallel Applications in Visual Studio 2010
TaskCompletionSource
Join Danny Shih as he introduces the TaskCompletionSource<TResult> type. He’ll cover basic usage and walk through a full scenario
Learn more about the .NET Framework 4 and keep abreast of Parallel Computing tools and techniques via the Concurrency Dev Center.
See all videos in this series.
Concurrent Programming with .NET4 Collections
Join Josh and Steve as they demonstrate how to use various concurrency-safe Collections classes.
Collections and related constructs are new with .NET4 and Visual Studio 2010.
Learn more about the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace and keep abreast of Parallel Computing tools and techniques via the Concurrency Dev Center.
How to Cancel Work using .NET4 CancellationToken
Join Josh and Steve as they demonstrate how to safely cancel tasks in a parallel task execution scenario.
CancellationToken and related constructs are new with .NET4 and Visual Studio 2010.
Learn more about the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace and keep abreast of Parallel Computing tools and techniques via the Concurrency Dev Center.
The .NET4 Countdown Synchronization Primitive
Join Josh and Steve as they demonstrate how to use the new .NET4 Countdown event synchronization primitive in task coordination scenarios.
Countdown and related constructs are new with .NET4 and Visual Studio 2010.
Learn more about the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace and keep abreast of Parallel Computing tools and techniques via the Concurrency Dev Center.
Lazy Optimized Resource Initialization
Join Josh and Steve as they demonstrate how to use the new .NET4 Lazy<T> class in optimized object initialization scenarios.
Lazy<T> is one of many new thread-safe data-structures available with .NET4 and Visual Studio 2010.
Learn more about the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace and keep abreast of Parallel Computing tools and techniques via the Concurrency Dev Center.