Saturday, April 12, 2008

Brahma - Calculations within the GPU

I have the test library setup now for Brahama, the GPU wrapper for Microsoft Accelerator.  It looks fast.  Really fast.  And the ability to mix GPU & CPU execution is a killer feature.  Match this up with an Nvidia Tesla and you have one kickass computer.

But does it play Flight Simulator?

Sorted 4096 Vector4s on the GPU in 0.1739 seconds, average time for each iteration was 0.0000
    Validating sort results: Error
    Array was set up in 0.0004 seconds
    Sorted 4096 Vector4s on the  CPU in 1.1536 seconds, average time for each iteration was 0.0003

I hope the focus stays on Brahma, the GPU-executing class wrapper.  Do I want to get rid of WPF and keep XAML?  No, I just want to see some more examples of Brahma with real-world Cuda-like samples.

How about some Silverlight integration too?

XAML without WPF = XOML

For a long time, I’ve been writing about how messed up Xaml is because of WPF-interdependency, and how Microsoft should have decoupled the Xaml bits from WPF, etc (Some of these rants were on my old blog). Well, I finally decided to do something about it, and I’m writing a XAML-like library that loads, and writes markup using its own XomlLoader and XomlWriter. At this point I’m calling the markup eXtensible Object Markup Language (I know that the Workflow Foundations’ designer files have that extension…) because that’s what its meant to be. It is also aimed to run on the .NET Framework, Mono and the .NET CF. :)

Using Xoml, you will be able to data-bind, forward reference, resource reference, write markup-extensions and more. I will be putting this project up for download shortly, look out for more news on it.

Ananth’s very own blog

C$ Programming Language - Home

C$ (CBucks).  Another CPU to GPU calculation engine.

This about sums it up.

C$ language, while concentrating on solving computationally intensive problems, also aims at solving system problems and easing integration of high-performance code into user-friendly applications, which becomes crucial as parallelism becomes widely available even on commodity PCs. In order to solve system problems, one needs object-oriented programming support in the language. For high-performance programming, however, one needs some means of parallelization. As the language is supposed to be highly portable, no assumptions can be made about the underlying architecture (GPU, SMP etc.). Therefore, some kind of array programming seems a good choice here.

 

C$ Project Home Page

The aim of this project is creating a unified language and system for seamless parallel programming on modern GPU's and CPU's. In future, it is planned to be extended to other processors.

C$ Programming Language - Home

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Infragistics - Investing in Microsoft Silverlight Controls

 

FaceOut - Rich Internet Sales Dashboard

Infragistics' faceOut is an interactive demonstration of our NetAdvantage for Silverlight preview controls.  Using our chart, gauge, and enhanced scroll panel, we've created a salesperson dashboard to illustrate how you can build a richer experience on the Web for a real, line-of-business scenario.  We've taken this concept a step farther by creating an enterprise mashup using representative enterprise sales data along with Windows Live Maps and the Live Contacts schema to show how you can integrate your corporate data with services provided on the internet to bring you a business-driven mashup experience.

Infragistics - Investing in Microsoft Silverlight Controls

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Lightstreamer :: Live Web Content Delivery

This would be useful for queuing systems and quote-tracking systems, among other things.  Not sure if it supports Silverlight, but definitely .NET.

Based on the AJAX-Comet paradigm, it streams real-time data to any Web browser, without installing anything on the client. Both HTML and Flex applications can receive live data from Lightstreamer, as well as traditional thick clients. See below for a quick example.

Lightstreamer :: Live Web Content Delivery

SilverPart (Beta 1.0) - Home - Silverlight Web Part

 

silverpart.jpg
Project Description
This project includes a Silverlight wrapper Web Part that can be used in SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) or WSS 3.0 to expose Silverlight content.
The goal of this project is to create a generic web part that has custom properties that provide flexibility for embedding different Silverlight applications in SharePoint sites.
The SilverPart Web Part was created with the intention of allowing the integration of Silverlight and SharePoint technologies in order to create full RIA applications.

SilverPart (Beta 1.0) - Home

Unit Testing with Silverlight 2 - Jeff Wilcox

 

Test support for Silverlight

At MIX we released source code to the controls, unit tests, and we including a unit test framework that runs in the web browser using Silverlight on the Mac and PC.  The Microsoft.Silverlight.Testing framework is simple, easy-to-use, and will give developers yet another way to increase their productivity and application quality.

In today’s post we’ll take our working chat interface from Scott’s last tutorial, improve its testability, and add some simple tests.  At the end we’ll have a set of cross-platform, cross-browser tests that can run everywhere

Unit Testing with Silverlight 2 - Jeff Wilcox

NetFXHarmonics DevServer Released

One example of WPF databinding.

When announce any major project I always provide an "as a training tool" section to explain how the project can be used for personal training.  NetFXHarmonics DevServer is built using .NET 3.5 and relies heavily on LINQ and WCF with a WPF interface.  In terms of LINQ, you can find many examples of how to use both query expression syntax and extension method syntax.  When people first learn LINQ, they think that LINQ is an O/R mapper.  Well, it's not (and probably shouldn't be usef for that in enterprise applications! there is only one enterprise class O/R mapper: LLBLGen Pro).  LINQ allows Language INtegrated Query in both C# and VB.  So, in DevServer, you will see heavy reliable on LINQ to search List<> objects and transform LINQ database entities to WCF DTOs.

NetFXHarmonics DevServer Released

Silverlight 2 DIGG Sample Part I

Silverlight mashup with Digg.

Scott Guthrie has a great eight part series titled First Look at Silverlight 2 where he walks you through building a Silverlight 2 sample app from scratch.  The walkthrough highlights almost all of the key features of Silverlight 2 Beta 1.  The walkthrough is so comprehensive that I have been using a slightly modified version of it for my Silverlight 2 presentations.  Since I am a big fan of seeing vs. reading, I asked Scott if it would be ok if I turned his written walkthrough into a video walkthrough delivered as a Channel 9 screencast.

Silverlight 2 DIGG Sample Part I

Thursday, April 3, 2008