Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Chris L Rae

Charles David Ellis

Jeffrey James Duzak

Minggiang Xu

Mark Dalin Parris

A framework for enabling users to create User Defined Functions (UDFs), which can run simultaneously without using multiple calculation threads, is provided. A calculation engine continues a remainder of calculation operations independent of a pending asynchronous function upon starting to run the asynchronous function without waiting to receive a result. The result value is introduced to the computation at a later time during the calculation cycle, when it is received or completed by the calculation engine. When the results are received, downstream operations such as dependent functions are calculated without changing a flow of dependencies within the operations.

Asynchronous user defined functions

Technologies are described herein for the automated offloading of the execution of a user-defined function ('UDF') to a high performance computing ('HPC') system. When a request is received to calculate a workbook that references a UDF, a spreadsheet application program determines, based upon a tag set by the UDF, whether the UDF is safe for execution on the HPC system. If the UDF is safe for execution on the HPC system, the spreadsheet application program causes the UDF to be executed on the HPC system using a connector that communicates with the HPC system to cause the UDF to be executed thereupon. A container executing on the HPC system emulates interfaces provided by the spreadsheet application program and is utilized to execute the UDF. Results of the execution of the UDF on the HPC system may be returned asynchronously to the connector and to the spreadsheet application program.

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Chris L Rae