Microsoft launches .NET 8 developer platform and .NET Aspire for cloud applications

Microsoft today released the latest version of its .NET open source development platform. The new version of .NET8 not only makes a lot of improvements in performance, but also adds a new code generator-Dynamic Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which Microsoft says can improve the performance of applications developed using .NET8 by 20%.

Microsoft noted in a blog post:

The now supported AVX-512 instruction set allows you to perform parallel operations on 512-bit data vectors, which means you can process more data in less time. Primitive types (numeric and above) now implement new formattable and parsable interfaces, allowing them to be directly formatted and parsed to UTF-8 without any transcoding overhead.

Microsoft said that the TechEmpower benchmark showed that in the JSONAPI scenario, .NET8's performance improved by 18% compared to .NET7, and in the Fortunes scenario, .NET8's performance improved by 24% compared to .NET7.

Since this is a Microsoft-developed platform, Microsoft is also pushing to use .NET8 for AI-based applications. It states::

With the rise of artificial intelligence applications, new tools and SDKs have emerged. We work with numerous internal and external partners, such as Azure OpenAI, Azure Cognitive Search, Milvus, Qdrant, and Microsoft Teams, to ensure that .NET developers can easily access a variety of AI models, services, and platforms through their respective SDKs. Additionally, the open-source Semantic Core SDK simplifies the integration of these AI components into new and existing applications, helping you deliver innovative user experiences.

AOT (ahead of time) applications developed with .NET8 will also see performance improvements when used on Linux and Windows platforms, meaning developers do not have to use a JIT (just in time) compiler to compile the application at runtime.

In addition to releasing .NET 8, Microsoft also released the first version of .NET Aspire for making cloud-based applications. Microsoft says it uses various components such as telemetry, resiliency, configuration and health checks by default. Microsoft also says it uses a local developer experience that's simple and easy to use, while also being mature enough to create cloud-based applications. Developers can learn more about .NETAspire in this separate blog post:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-dotnet-aspire-simplifying-cloud-native-development-with-dotnet-8/

They can also submit feedback on the preview on GitHub.