Comment Feed for Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching (Charles on Channel 9)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching

Surupa Biswas — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:53:03 GMT

As with everything related to performance, you'll want to measure. :-) For large client applications there is often a significant startup time & working set reduction (such as a 5x reduction in warm startup time) if an application is fully NGen-ed (i.e. NGen-ed application code running against NGen-ed Framework assemblies). Some of the criteria for deciding whether to NGen your application are described here: http://blogs.msdn.com/clrcodegeneration/archive/2007/09/15/to-ngen-or-not-to-ngen.aspx.

Re: Re: Re: Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching

sandeep@.net — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:20:12 GMT

What are the performance benefits of running JITed code against ngened code. Are the performance improvements significant? What are the criteria to use ngen native images instead of plain JITed code?

Re: Re: Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching

Surupa Biswas — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:01:00 GMT

An NGen image contains code generated by the JIT compiler as well as data structures that the runtime generates (both are similar to what would be created at application runtime if the NGen image didn't exist). There are some differences in the code generated ahead of time vs. at runtime, but they're mostly minor (examples include generated code for accessing statics - at pre-compilation time we assume the module is going to be loaded as domain-neutral, the cross-module inlining rules are different (NGen rules are more conservative to allow for targeted patching), etc.). NGen enables sharing of code and runtime data structures across processes, so it typically improves both startup time (especially warm startup) and working set.

Background information about NGen can be found in this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163610.aspx. Improvements we're making in CLR 4 are outlined here: http://blogs.msdn.com/clrcodegeneration/archive/2009/05/03/Improvements-to-NGen-in-.NET-Framework-4.aspx and those made in 3.5 SP1 here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd569747.aspx.

Re: Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching

Allan Lindqvist — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:06:17 GMT

cool stuff :) ngen has always been kind of a mystery to me :) but the ngen code isnt diffrent from the jitted code right? is the only win in start up/load perf? [not trying to devaule that though, in asp.net esp, its important] Are there other benefits to ngening?

Re: Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching

warren — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:48:13 GMT

I'm really glad to see some serious work has been done in the direction of making patching the .NET Framework a lot less intrusive. A lot of IT folks get really grumbly when it's time to patch the framework, because the NGEN process will run for 10+ minutes, usually after a reboot, and quite often when the user is trying to get their day started.

I also have to say, Ms. Biswas is a really engaging and interesting person to listen to. It's always a big bonus when you can not only show your passion for your work, but explain it in a very clear way without a lot of umm'ing and ahh'ing.

Re: Surupa Biswas: CLR 4 - Resilient NGen with Targeted Patching

Paul Bruce — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:52:46 GMT

Awsome work, Surupa. Thanks for all your hard work on this, and to the rest of the CLR team. Can't wait for all these new features on 4.0!!!

Also, very cool, to have something as intricate as a conversation about NI versioning be articulated as clearly and concisely as it was.

Charles, book Surupa for a WM_IN show soon! :)

Cheers!