.Net Standard 2.1, the next version of a set of standard APIs for all .Net implementations, will add about 3,000 APIs. The .Net Standard specification has been an attempt to prevent fragmentation of .Net and to provide for code-sharing.
While the definition of Version 2.1 remains a work in progress, Microsoft revealed that many of the planned APIs are new while others were existing ones were added to help further converge .Net implementations.
Highlighting .Net Standard Version 2.1 is the addition of Span<T>, which is considered critical to most performance improvements in .Net Core 2.1. Span<T> provides an array-like type to represent managed and unmanaged memory in a uniform way. Also, it supports slicing without copying and enables more efficient management of buffers.
