Microsoft Build 2024 recap
Giving developers the tools they need to unlock The Future.
Developers build the future. They create the applications and services, and we at Microsoft create the tools and platform that enable developers to build intelligent experiences that unlock human potential and in a very real way, shaping the world of tomorrow.
At this year’s Microsoft Build conference, Satya Nadella emphasized this fact, highlighting the reality that we are stepping into a new era—one powered by AI apps. And as the primary users and creators of these powerful new apps, we, as an industry, need a shared vision of what the future should be.
Throughout the week, Microsoft made over 60 announcements, spanning everything from new AI features for Windows to the expansion of Microsoft Copilot and the plethora of new tools for developers.
Let’s dive into three key announcements that hold particular significance for the developer community and invite readers to explore how they might responsibly use these new tools in their own work.
What’s new in Copilot at Build
Copilot's recent upgrades bring significant improvements to its AI capabilities. It now provides developers with more accurate code suggestions, better understands the context of the code being written, and communicates in a way that is more easily understood. These upgrades empower developers to enhance code completion and improve code quality checks with Copilot.
This upgrade extends to Team Copilot, which now makes it even easier to collaborate with other devs. This means easier sharing of code snippets, better task organization, and best of all, harnessing the collective knowledge of the team to help developers do more.
With the introduction of GitHub Copilot Extensions, developers can also integrate GitHub Copilot with various tools and services, even creating custom extensions tailored to their specific requirements. This flexibility enhances GitHub Copilot's functionality and adaptability to diverse coding environments.
Furthermore, GitHub Copilot now offers more context-aware suggestions and can adapt to the individual coding style and preferences of each developer.
This personalized assistance aims to boost efficiency and effectiveness in coding tasks, allowing developers to focus more on innovation rather than more routine coding chores.
In essence, GitHub Copilot's upgraded features help to streamline coding processes by automating repetitive tasks, providing accurate, near real-time documentation, and suggesting best practices designed to reduce errors and streamline code reviews. The aim of these upgrades is to improve the coding experience for devs and to free up their time to concentrate on more creative and innovative endeavors.
Watch the session: With great power, comes great responsibility in code quality
Watch the session: Revolutionize the way you work with automation and AI
Microsoft deepens generative AI partnership with Hugging Face to bring their models onto Azure
Microsoft and Hugging Face have expanded their partnership to bring Hugging Face’s advanced AI models to the Azure platform. Developers now have easy access to 20 new Hugging Face models, significantly enhancing natural language processing tasks.
The Azure AI Model Catalog now includes these new open-source models from Hugging Face, such as Smaug-72B-v0.1 and the Japanese/English text generation model Fugaku-LLM-13B. These models benefit from Hugging Face’s optimized runtimes, Text Generation Inference (TGI) and Text Embedding Inference (TEI), which improve performance using techniques like tensor parallelism and dynamic batching.
With the addition of AMD GPUs, Azure’s AI infrastructure performance has significantly improved. This upgrade powers the Hugging Face Enterprise Hub, making processes faster, more efficient, and more cost-effective. The new ND MI300X v5 infrastructure, featuring AMD Instinct™ MI300X GPUs, has set new benchmarks for performance and efficiency, allowing developers to run over 10,000 pre-trained models on Azure without modifying their applications.
Developers can now easily integrate Hugging Face’s chat models and compact AI models into their projects, expanding the range of applications that can use these advanced tools. A standout addition is the Phi-3 vision model, which excels at understanding both text and images and is especially useful for mobile app development where space and efficiency are critical.
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Additionally, Microsoft is making Phi-3 models available on the HuggingChat playground. This platform lets developers and data scientists experiment with Phi-3 models and discover new uses, combining the strengths of Hugging Face’s open platforms with Azure’s enterprise-grade capabilities.
The Next Giant Leap in PC’s is here.
One of the most significant announcements was the introduction of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs. They are "the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built", and mark a new era of high performance PC’s, perfectly tailored for the world of AI-enhanced computing.
These Windows 11 PCs are powered by advanced neural processing units (NPUs) from the Snapdragon® X Series, delivering over 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS). They feature powerful CPUs for fast video rendering, incredible all-day battery life, and ample RAM for efficient multitasking.
We also announced Windows Copilot Runtime, where developers can take advantage in a variety of ways from high level API’s that can be accessed via simple toggle settings all the way to bringing their own machine learning models, representing the end-to-end ecosystem; the Windows Copilot Library, providing over 40 pre-integrated AI models for easy integration into applications without starting from scratch; and ONNX Runtime, allowing developers to deploy AI models onto NPUs with optimized performance and efficiency.
Learn more: Deep dive into the Copilot + PC Developer Guide
Microsoft File Explorer is now a git repository
One of the most anticipated announcements was the integration of Git into Microsoft File Explorer. This marks a giant leap in developer tools, bringing project management capabilities directly into File Explorer
With this integration now in place, developers can handle version control tasks like tracking file changes, viewing commit history, and managing branches—all without leaving File Explorer. It also makes it possible for developers to collaborate right within File Explorer, making it easier to share code changes and collaborate on projects.
What’s more, tools like GitHub Copilot now help enhance collaboration by turning natural language descriptions into code snippets, making communication smoother among team members.
This integration aims to make version control tasks easier, encourage better, more collaborative teamwork, and empowers developers to do more right from their desktops.
Watch the session: Developer experience improvements in Windows
Building the future with the next-generation of developer tools
This year's Build conference was a watershed moment for our industry, offering a plethora of new powerful, cutting-edge tools. But beyond just showcasing new innovations, this conference had a deeper purpose: empowering developers to shape the future responsibly.
As the influence of AI continues to shape our lives, Microsoft's focus on responsible AI is essential. Developers, as the architects and users of these powerful tools, will play a pivotal role in helping us ensure the future is a place that works for everyone.