Microsoft released the first public CTP of their Parallel Extensions Framework for .NET. This framework reduces the entry barriers and improves the developer experience when writing Multi-threaded applications. Why is this so important? Because, the laptop or desktop you are reading this post on probably has a dual-core processor. The one you get for Christmas will probably have a 4 core processor, and your IT department is probably getting sales calls from their reps offering then 8, 16, 32, 64 core or multi-processor machines.
I've had a play previously with OpenMP which is a standard syntax for marking up C++ code that then executes parallel (supported since visual Studio 2005, .NET 2.0), but if we wanted these benefits in managed code you are faced with rolling your own threading implementation, (and then getting it working :-) ) Possible, but by no means as simple as it could be.
These extensions will make it easier for everybody to write thread-safe, parallel operating code across as many processors or cores a machine has. You have got to love that.
Parallel Computing Microsite on Microsoft.com
December 2007 Parallel Extensions CTP for Visual Studio 2008 Download
Parallel Computing Blog for these Parallel Extensions
Go download them - What you can't multi-task at work???
Troy.