At Microsoft Build 2024, .NET 9 4 was unveiled, introducing features such as the Tensor<T> type for deep learning and collaboration with OpenAI for GPT4o and Assistants v2. These latest improvements also bring .NET Aspire, streamlining cloud-native app development. Updates extend across ASP.NET Core, Blazor, and .NET MAUI, with C# 13 enhancing flexibility and performance. Additionally, .NET is gearing up to introduce monitoring tools for AI applications.
The new Tensor<T> type is essential for deep learning and other mathematical models. Tensors are multidimensional arrays facilitating effective data handling and flow in neural networks. This addition simplifies data sharing between libraries like ONNX Runtime, TorchSharp, and ML.NET, ensuring seamless integration.
.NET is set to release an official library in collaboration with OpenAI, ensuring a unified experience across OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. This SDK will support the latest OpenAI features, including GPT4o and Assistants v2. Other collaborations with Qdrant, Milvus, and Weavite provide .NET developers with various vector database options, enhancing the AI ecosystem.
.NET Aspire, now generally available, is a new stack designed to streamline the development of cloud-native applications. It combines tools, templates, and NuGet packages to help developers build observable, distributed, and production-ready applications more efficiently. Compatible with Visual Studio 2022, the .NET CLI, and Visual Studio Code with C# Dev Kit, .NET Aspire aims to enhance the developer experience for cloud-native scenarios.
The updates extend to improving performance across .NET libraries and frameworks, including ASP.NET Core, Blazor, and .NET MAUI. .NET MAUI, the multi-platform app UI for building apps across iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows, continues to see enhancements. Recent updates focus on performance, quality, and a seamless migration path for Xamarin developers.
C# 13 brings enhancements focusing on flexibility and performance, including improvements to params parameters and the introduction of extension types. These updates are designed to offer developers more flexibility and improved performance without significant code changes.
Below the official post, a question appeared asking if the new extension types in C# 13 are intended to function like traits. Kathleen Dollard, a principal program manager at Microsoft, answered:
One of the challenging (and sometimes quite fun) aspects of designing C# is that we draw ideas from other languages, but find what we think is the best C# way to do them. Traits was certainly one of the inspirations.
Extensions are not interfaces. They are associated with a specific underlying type. I think we will get closer to traits if we combine them with interfaces – allowing extensions to implement interfaces for the underlying type. That will not be in C# 13 but we are looking forward to feedback on doing that in the future.
Furthermore, .NET is set to introduce features for monitoring and observing large language model applications, utilizing .NET Aspire, Semantic Kernel, and Azure. These tools aim to provide developers with detailed metrics and tracing data, enhancing the reliability and performance of AI applications.
With these comprehensive updates, .NET continues to position itself as a robust platform for building AI-integrated and cloud-native applications. The framework aims to ensure developers have the tools and support they need to create high-performance, scalable solutions.