What are the differences between the new .NET 8 and the previous version?

With the introduction of .NET 8, Microsoft has further improved its development platform from the previous version, .NET 7. In this blog, we discuss the main differences between .NET 8 and .NET 7, so you can decide which version best suits your project needs.

Support: LTS versus STS

A crucial difference between .NET 7 and .NET 8 is the support model. .NET 7 is a Standard-Term Support (STS) release, which means it gets 18 months of support. In contrast, .NET 8 is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release with a support period of three years. For projects that require long-term stability and support, .NET 8 is the obvious choice. 

Performance improvements

.NET 8 builds on the performance improvements of .NET 7 and introduces additional optimisations:

  • JIT compiler and garbage collector: The Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler and garbage collector have been further optimised, resulting in faster boot times and lower memory consumption. 

  • SIMD support and AVX-512: .NET 8 adds support for SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) operations on 512-bit vectors and Intel's AVX-512 instruction set, improving performance for data-intensive applications such as machine learning and scientific computing. 

New functionalities

In addition to performance improvements, .NET 8 introduces several new features:

  • Blazor Web App model: A new Blazor project template combines the capabilities of Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly, simplifying the development experience.Native AOT support: Improved Native Ahead-Of-Time (AOT) compilation now supports x64 and Arm64 architectures on macOS, with a significant reduction in application size on Linux.

  • Garbage Collector improvements: The server Garbage Collector now has dynamic adjustment to application size, managing memory consumption more efficiently.

Conclusion

.NET 8 offers significant improvements over .NET 7, especially in terms of long-term support, performance and new features. For developers looking for a stable and future-proof platform, upgrading to .NET 8 is a logical step.

 

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