I'm back from the Game Developers Conference and a week of sorting through about 25 or so video interviews to bring you some of the highlights from Intel at GDC. Jerry and I just posted some of our favorites - including 2 pre-release gaming titles (Far Cry 2 and Bionic Commando) running on the just-announced the Intel® Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform (code named Skulltrail) with both games taking advantage of all 8 cores! Turns out that many of the demo owners were from France or Montreal, so I believe I spoke more French (thankfully not in the videos) at the conference than I have in my 10 years at Intel.

1) I grabbed a few minutes with Elliot Garbus, our new Vice President and General Manager of the Visual Computing Software Group. He provided an overview of Intel's presence and strategy at the Game Developers Conference and encouraged game developers to take advantage of multithreading, Intel graphics, and Intel software development communities.

2) Intel launched the Intel® Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform, codenamed Skull Trail, at the Game Developers Conference. See 8 cores in action and hear from Francois Piednoel, Intel Senior Performance Analyst, talk about the future of high end gaming platforms.

3) Get a sneak peak from Guillaume Beaulieu from UbiSoft showing a pre-release version of Far Cry 2 running on Skull Trail. See what the game will look like when it takes advantage of all 8 cores. Are you ready?

4) Early Look at Pre-release Bionic Commando: See a not yet available version of Bionic Commando with new visual effects taking advantage of all 8 cores of the new Intel platform for Extreme Gamers, code named “Skull Trail.” Shown for the first time at the Game Developers Conference – here is your preview. Turn the dial all the way up on the game.

5) Leigh Davies, Intel Applications Engineer, taught one of our most talked about sessions at GDC: Optimizing DirectX for Multicore. How to optimize for graphics using the CPUs and GPUs? What tools do you need? How can you scale on the hardware as the industry moves to 8 cores and more? I grabbed him for 5 minutes and asked him to give us a quick overview. He has committed to me to do a longer, more detailed Podcast upon his return to the U.K.

There are more videos coming from GDC. Watch these, share them with friends and colleages, then tell me what you think!

Main links shown in the videos: Our ISN Graphics Community: www.intel.com/software/graphics and Multicore Community: www.intel.com/software/multicore. For more on Skull Trail, visit www.intel.com/go/extremegaming.