Tasks Are Not Threads in .NET 4 Beta 1

Posted on http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel
.Net Framework 4.0 with its Parallel Extensions, still in Beta 1, will add the possibility to work with tasks. It is very important to understand that tasks aren't threads. Tasks run using threads. However, it doesn't mean they replace threads.
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A Domain-Specific Language to Let Groovy Go Parallel

Posted on http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel

Groovy is an agile dynamic language for the Java Platform. It runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). It supports Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs). Last week, GParallelizer 0.7 release added exciting intuitive ways to handle tasks, actors and message. Great news for the Groovy community in order to go parallel.

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Work Stealing Queues in .Net 4 and in Previous Versions

Posted on http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel
.Net 4.0 Beta 1 offers a new and improved thread pool engine. It uses work stealing queues to provide nice load-balancing capabilities, better performance and greater scalability. The work stealing mechanism allows you to reduce the scheduling overhead in highly parallelized algorithms.
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Alternatives for Parallelizing Legacy Serial Code

Posted on http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel
Applications developed using modern programming languages can become legacy code faster than expected. Multicore microprocessors have been found guilty of transforming outstanding serial code into legacy code in just a few years. However, there are many alternatives to translate multicore power into application performance making small changes to the legacy serial code.
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Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0 Beta 1 Finally Arrived

Posted on www.ddj.com/go-parallel
After a long silence since the last CTP (Community Technology Preview), Microsoft released the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 that comes with the new .Net Framework 4.0. This new release will bring new promising features that empower parallel programming using the supported languages.

Use lambda expressions in C# to simplify the parallelized code

Posted on Intel Software Network
So, you want to start using Task Parallel Library Beta 1. You want to take advantage of the new features that will be available in .Net 4.0. Hold on! Are you familiar with lambda expressions?

Counting cores in .Net and Java

Posted on Intel Software Network
As C# and Visual Basic (in the .Net world) and Java are high level programming languages, most developers were not used to check for some hardware information. With multicore microprocessors and a task-oriented programming model, trying to take full advantage of parallel processing capabilities offered by modern microprocessors, this is changing.

Invoking parallel tasks

Posted on Intel Software Network
In a recent post, Robert Chesebrough (Intel) talked about less focus on threads and more focus on tasks. I agree with him. I do believe that decomposing the job to be done into many tasks is the key to a successfully parallelized algorithm.