Dynamic Profile-Guided Optimization (PBO) by default is the most valuable new feature in the upcoming .NET 8, Microsoft software engineer Stephen Toub states in a recent blog.
In his blog, Microsoft’s Stephen Toub covers several new features of .NET 8, which is likely to get its release this November. He says the most significant change is the ability to set Dynamic Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO), which will be turned on by default.
With PGO, an application runs with “instrumentation” and is optimized with data from this “instrumentation”. Dynamic PBM goes a step further, handling this process by what is known as Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation. This instruments the first tier and uses data from the second tier optimization.
More insightful code and faster running
The functionality was already available in .NET 6 in preview, standard in .NET 7 and thus soon by default in .NET 8. According to Toub, this latest development ensures that code becomes much more insightful and runs faster. Therefore, he sees this new feature as the most important development for .NET 8.
Other new features .NET 8
Other new features that he values highly include improvements around vectorization, threading, bounds checking, Blazor, the Mono runtime for mobile- and browser-based applications, concurrency, exceptions and string handling.
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