New year, new Hastlayer version - and we think this one is quite exciting, a lot of improvements arrived! Let's see the highlights: Hastlayer now supports method inlining. Method inlining is when a compiler basically copies the implementation of the method to the place where it's called, thus avoiding the overhead of a method call but making the program bigger. We've added support for the AggressiveInlining attribute so you can instruct Hastlayer to inline methods, just as you'd do the same with the .NET compiler. Since method calls in hardware are also an overhead you can vastly improve the performance of your Hastlayer-using code if it contains many small methods that are frequently called. In our tests with the posit floating point type we cut down execution time by about 40%! Added a 64b fixed-point arithmetic library and made it Hastlayer-compatible. Why is this good? Although making computations with integers is very efficient (and fast), sometimes you need to use fractions. Before the only option with Hastlayer was to scale up your floating point numbers (multiplying them by 10000 for example so there will be no digits after the decimal point), let Hastlayer do the work, then scale them back down. But now we added a 64b number type that can also handle fractions, it's just that there are 31 bits for the digits before the decimal point and 32 bits for the ones after it. But still, the computations will be quite efficient. Nevertheless we're also working on floating point support. Added support for ref and out parameters and made configuration of parallelized code a bit easier. So Hastlayer just got a lot better for a lot of programs! For more details and the corresponding downloads visit the Hastlayer SDK and Hastlayer Hardware Framework - Xilinx repos on GitHub. Be sure to also check out the updated documentation on how to utilize these new features.

The new version of Hastlayer is out! Apart from nice Transformer improvements this also includes one huge example: An implementation of the 3D Kardar-Parisi-Zhang surface growth simulation algorithm. This algorithm simulates how the surface of a material (like a silicon wafer used in chip manufacturing) changes over time. We created the KPZ example in collaboration with the Wigner Research Centre for Physics to test against an existing GPU implementation (testing is upcoming). Also, don't forget that the Hastlayer World Tour is still on with three events coming up!

Some short news around Hastlayer: what happened in the last month or so? Hastlayer goes on a World Tour! If you attend a .NET-related meetup somewhere then there's a good chance we'll showcase Hastlayer there too! Version 1.0.6 is released with some important debug improvements and bugfixes. While Hastlayer lacks floating point support we've been working on it for a while. While we've implemented a proof of concept for Unums it turned out to be less then ideal. It's an interesting concept but for now we won't pursue it as the core of Hastlayer floating point support and instead we'll implement Posits. With this we'll have float and double-like, but better floating point support shortly. Some new Hastlayer videos uploaded to YouTube.

Our GPU Day session's recording is now on online! In this talk we not just gave an overview of Hastlayer but also introduced support for the Unum floating point number format! Watch the recording below:

Next week, between 19-21 September you can tune in to the .NET Conf virtual conference. Organized by Microsoft and the .NET community it's quite a big .NET event; and Hastlayer will be part of it too! We'll showcase the magic under the title "Turning software into computer chips - Hastlayer" on day 2 (20 September) at 17:00 UTC. It's really exciting to share Hastlayer with all the fellow .NET developers out there! See you at .NET Conf! You can check out the full agenda as well, there are many interesting talks coming.

You may have noticed that GitHub link above. It means Hastlayer goes open source! Both components that you use locally to utilize Hastlayer are now up on GitHub; you can start with the Hastlayer SDK project. Source code, documentation and a visibility of project progress and direction in form of issues is now all transparent. How does this sound?

Just as last year, this 22-23 June Hastlayer will again be showcased at the GPU Day conference, organized by the Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Expect to see some exciting news on what we've built with Hastlayer. Scientific computations ahead! This year's conference is even sponsored by us!

In December Hastlayer was a guest in India: we were visiting the IEEE iNIS conference in the city of Gwalior! Organized by various groups within IEEE (that needs no introduction as the world's largest engineering organization) the International Symposium on Nanoelectronic and Information Systems was focused mostly on electronics in various computer systems. It was hosted by the university of ABV-IIITM where the IT student also commonly specialize in creating FPGA and VLSI circuits. Hastlayer was one of the sessions touching on software development while keeping the connection with logic hardware design. After IEEE SMC this was the second IEEE event Hastlayer was a part of!

If you haven't been on any of the older or very recent conferences where you could see Hastlayer for yourself then here's something for you: a short but hands-on, very technical, very developer-focused Hastlayer demo! Just comment your questions/remarks here or below the video. Get in touch with us if you could use Hastlayer!

As mentioned earlier Hastlayer was part of the show on the IEEE SMC conference! With about 1000 people signed up from all over the world we had quite a big crowd checking out our table too, meeting with many inspiring people during the four days of the conference. IEEE is one of the world's most famous and renowned (as well as largest) technical professional organization that needs no introduction. IEEE's Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMC) held its annual conference in October in Budapest, Hungary. Showing the weight of the event even the President and CEO of IEEE itself, Barry L. Shoop, was attending. A lot of people came to our table to see what Hastlayer is and what is it good for. We're looking forward to the fruitful partnerships that will come out of all of these new connections!