Channel 9 - Entries tagged with Parallel Patterns Library

GoingNative 8: Introducing Casablanca - A Modern C++ API for Connected Computing

Charles — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:03:31 GMT

Welcome to the 9th installment of GoingNative. Charles flies solo this time around as Diego is on a well-deserved break from work.

At GoingNative 2012, Herb Sutter addressed the need for more general purpose standard C++ libraries - high level libraries - for use in modern computing. So, things like HTTP, REST, JSON are important today (and working with these technologies is not as easy as it should be in C++), not to mention simplifying asynchronous programming for C++ developers. We live an asynchronous world and C++ libraries need to evolve to compensate for this fact (and catch up to .NET and Java in this regard both on the client and on the server...). What's the story for C++ in the cloud?

A very small group of C++ developers inside Microsoft have started an incubation project to make native libraries that afford both developer productivity and performance and power - and for C++ developers. We love this! This is the Casablanca API and it takes full advantage of C++11.

This episode is dedicated to the Casablanca "dev lab" project with the hope that all of you will download and experiment with the API, vet it, push it, break it, provide feedback to speed up its maturation (it is alpha quality, of course (it's an incubation and this is the first release), so there will be a few bugs, but it's stable enough to be useful right now). Go get it!

What does Casablanca provide, exactly?

With Casablanca, you get support for doing things like developing REST services for Azure, or accessing them from clients via an HTTP library, sending JSON data, accessing Azure blob and queue storage, and using TCP for flexible networking needs, all in a library that takes advantage of modern C++.

Casablanca also gives you a convenient model for composing asynchronous operations. C++ 11 offers a whole new set of capabilities that can make dealing with asynchronous operations easy, and Casablanca takes advantage of that throughout.

Another aspect of Casablanca is its implementation of the actor programming model, which has proven itself useful in building reliable and scalable systems. (not familiar with the Actor Model, well, learn from the inventor of it here).

Table of Contents:

[00:00] GoingNative(); //Charles flies solo for this episode (Diego is on vacation). Quick chat about what's coming (new STL series (the person, not the library)), introduction to Casablanca, a modern C++ API (incubation) for asynchronous client/server computing (so, modern C++ for the cloud and the client)

[01:49] Charles has a conversation with Casablanca engineering team members Niklas Gustafsson and Steve Gates.

[44:20] ~GoingNative(); //Charles talks about Casablanca - please download the libraries and experiment, provide feedback, help vet this new (experimental) API.

C++ AMP: The Test Team - Hallway Office Tour

Charles — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:37:33 GMT

C++ AMP (Accelerated Massive Parallelism) is a small set of open specification language extensions (two of them) and a single library (amp.h) that makes general purpose GPU programming (aka GPGPU) a first class, seamless experience in modern C++.

You've been able to experiment with C++ AMP since the VS11 Developer Preview back in September 2011. We figured it was a good time to go C9 on the C++ AMP team. So, we did. Four interviews have been conducted that pretty thoroughly cover C++ AMP and the people who design, implement, and test it. C++ AMP is a great technology for native developers seeking to harness the power of the GPU using the language and tools they are already comfortable with. C++ AMP is also an open specification and we'll see other compiler vendors producing C++ AMP implementations for their target platforms soon—that's been the goal since Day 1.

Get VC++11 Beta Now - test out AMP!

Here, we meet the members of the C++ AMP test team; the engineers who write C++ AMP test cases to push the technology to its limits, ensure that features work as intended, find bugs, make sure the technology is ready for prime time before it gets in your hands.

In Old School C9 fashion, we start off in an office - of team leader Jerry Higgins in this case - and then walk around the building to meet the C++ AMP test team members in their native habitat (offices).

Meet Jerry Higgins, Joe Mayo, Bharath Mysore Nanjundappa, Pavan Marella, Kevin Gao, Lukasz Mendakiewicz, Daniel Griffing, Hasibur Rahman, Pooja Nagpal, and Tamer Afify. Come take a hallway tour with us.

Enjoy!

See Part 1 - Daniel Moth: AMP Overview
See Part 2 - Yossi Levanoni: AMP Architecture and Design
See Part 3 - The AMP Development Team Roundtable

C++ AMP: Development Team Roundtable

Charles — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:54:05 GMT

Here, we meet the C++ AMP development team: Team leader Don McCrady, Dev Amit Agarwal, Dev Charles Fu, Dev Lingli Zhang, Dev Simon Wybranski, Dev Steve Deitz and Dev Weirong Zhu. Tune in to understand how C++ AMP is made and how it may evolve. These are among my favorite types of interviews. I love talking to developers. Tune in. Learn.

See Part 1 - Daniel Moth: AMP Overview
See Part 2 - Yossi Levanoni: AMP Architecture and Design
See Part 4 - The Test Team Hallway Office Tour

C++ AMP: Yossi Levanoni - Architecture and Design

Charles — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:07:44 GMT

Continuing with our four part series, we meet one of the architects of C++ AMP, Yossi Levanoni. You've met him before on C9. In this conversation, we go deeper into the design of C++ AMP (including exploring what led to some of the design decisions) and, of course, Yossi draws diagrams on the whiteboard like all architects must! You'll learn quite a bit about how C++ AMP works and why. Thanks for spending time with us, Yossi, and I'm sorry for mangling your last name!

See Part 1 - Daniel Moth: Overview
See Part 3 - The AMP Development Team Roundtable
See Part 4 - The AMP Test Team Hallway Office Tour

C++ AMP: Daniel Moth - Overview

Charles — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:34:51 GMT

PMs are responsible for documenting the vision, building the execution plans to turn the vision into a real project, manage the project to completion, ship the result of the project and to attract and work with customers to help them understand what the product means for them and why it matters to their business. It's quite a job. Daniel is one part of a team of engineers that consists of program management (Daniel), architecture (Yossi Levanoni is one of the architects of AMP and you'll meet him (again) in one these interviews), development (you'll meet the AMP dev team soon, round-table style), and test (you'll meet the AMP test team soon, hallway-tour style).

So, tell us what C++ AMP is and why it matters, Daniel. Give us some context and history. What's going on here? What's next?

Tune in and meet the people behind the restrict(ion)s, kernels, etc. It's GPGPU time on C9. Enjoy.

See Part 2 - Yossi Levanoni: AMP Architecture and Design
See Part 3 - The AMP Development Team Roundtable
See Part 4 - The AMP Test Team Hallway Office Tour

Asynchronous Programming for C++ Developers: PPL Tasks and Windows 8

Charles — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:50:47 GMT

The Parallel Patterns Library (PPL) provides a task-based asynchrony model that can make working with asynchronous APIs much easier for C++ programmers. Asynchronous APIs are pervasive in the "Windows 8" Windows Runtime (WinRT). Potentially long-running operations—like file and network I/O—are typically exposed through some asynchronous pattern.

Here, we meet software engineer and ConCRT/PPL team member Genevieve Fernandes and ConCRT/PPL team member Rahul Patil (lead program manager—you've met him before). The goal here is to explain how this stuff works and why it's designed the way it is. This conversation includes whiteboarding and a code demo. You'll see how you can use C++/CX plus PPL Tasks to produce asynchronous operations that JavaScript or C#/VB can consume in very natural ways (from their perspectives) on "Windows 8." Watch and learn!

Get the latest PPL to experiment with writing asynchronous code for "Windows 8" Metro style applications. Don't forget to provide feedback to the PPL team! They want to hear from you, so please write some code and see if you find this comfortable/useful/etc.

See the BUILD sessions on WinRT to get more information about asynchrony in "Windows 8."

Rick Molloy: Actor-based Programming in C++ - Control Flow versus Data Flow

Charles — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:51:43 GMT

Rick Molloy is back and he's got some code and coding techniques to share. Thank you Rick! This tutorial/example is done in C++, but the concepts span languages (actor-based, data flow style of programming)

Here, Rick explores converting a simple loop to a set of actors or agents that communicate via message passing. In particular he looks at the difference between a "control flow" style implementation and a "data flow" style implementation. The actor based approach is great because it separates the guts of the work from the loop logic so code looks more like the flow charts we draw on our whiteboards.

But, there's some down sides with the control flow approach and implementing the data flow approach can be tricky. So Rick wanted to walk through an example of both to help illustrate the differences.

The downside to the control flow approach comes in when you have lots of agents, there tends to be either a 1:1 coupling of threads to tasks OR the tasks start taking on more than one responsibility and become less manageable.

A data flow style approach helps with this, because it decouples the 1:1 thread to task relationship but it can be an awkward refactoring if you're not used to it, it takes more code, and there aren't many examples available to look at on the web so Rick wanted to share another one.

Download the code for this demo (will work in VC++ 2010)

Parallel Programming for C++ Developers: Tasks and Continuations, Part 2 of 2

Charles — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:39:47 GMT

The Parallel Computing Concurrency Runtime team write tools for the C++ community that make it easier to write reliable, performant and scalable concurrent and parallel code. In this conversation, Mike Chu , Dana Groff, Artur Laksberg, and Vinod Koduvayoor Subramanian talk about their latest addition to the Parallel Patterns Library which provides wait-free concurrency programming by specifying tasks, the ability to schedule tasks on events and continuations that specify a task or tasks which are run after one or more tasks finish. What’s better is that much of this is available now through the ConcRT Extra’s “Sample Pack”.

Here, Vinod Koduvayoor Subramanian, a software engineer who pushes this stuff to the limit and is a champion of target customers (also known as software testing), explains chaining tasks, continuations at the whiteboard. It's fast-paced so pay attention! This is the second part of a recent conversation about what's in the latest sample pack and the thinking behind it. See the first part here.

Please download the sample pack, play with the new library, push it and provide feedback to the team. They really want and need your input to insure they deliver the right things for real world usage by C++ developers. Go native!

Parallel Programming for C++ Developers: Tasks and Continuations, Part 1 of 2

Charles — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:12:23 GMT

The Parallel Computing Concurrency Runtime team write tools for the C++ community that make it easier to write reliable, performant and scalable concurrent and parallel code. In this conversation, Mike Chu , Dana Groff, Artur Laksberg, and Vinod Koduvayoor Subramanian talk about their latest addition to the Parallel Patterns Library which provides wait-free concurrency programming by specifying tasks, the ability to schedule tasks on events and continuations that specify a task or tasks which are run after one or more tasks finish. What’s better is that much of this is available today through the ConcRT Extra’s “Sample Pack”.