4,580 Posts served

11,094 Conversations started

Intel Gaming and Graphics Samples Blog-Post 1: Introduction

By Philip Taylor (Intel) (7 posts) on February 9, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Hi, I am Phil Taylor.

As I join a new team and start a new gig at Intel, its time to introduce myself and start a new blog.

I am now working on the team producing gaming and graphics samples in the Visual Computing Software Division. While there have been gaming and graphics samples shipped in the past, we are trying to raise the level of the algorithms, code quality, and asset quality to provide developers with production ready code they can drop into their applications.

How did this come about, and who am I?

I joined Intel to work on Larrabee. I worked on that project from when I joined Intel, Oct 2008, to when the refocusing was announced May 25 2010.

So when Larrabee was refocused, I had to find work. What I noticed was that anytime a big-time project has issues, most people run for cover. However, the job of representing Intel graphics still remained. And Sandy Bridge, especially on the mobile side, has very respectable graphics performance. So someone had to stay and work on the graphics samples when all the Larrabee people moved. That someone was me and a couple of my colleagues who have been helping with this program. You’ll learn more about them and the entire team over time.

So that’s why I am here, to get samples and best practices for using Intel graphics out to developers so they can develop on Intel hardware, for Intel hardware, and take great advantage of all we have to offer.

Who am I?

My work history is collected on my LinkedIn page. From that, some highlights from my history are:

- I started learning 3D programming in 1982. On Apple II’s. I still remember how to get into the Apple monitor from the keyboard. 3D0G.
- In 1984 I worked on a PERQ, an early workstation of note, and learned the joys of BitBlt and raster graphics.
- I went to my first SIGGRAPH in 1986, where I saw the original Luxo Jr movie in the Animation Festival and it received a standing ovation, I still remember the goosebumps I got from seeing emotion out of an ordinary desk lamp.
- I started programming for Windows in 1987, and my early spelunking got me into Undocumented Windows, the GDI chapters of course. Check the acknowledgements for my name.
- I started working with RenderMorphics and RealityLab in 1993 while at Kaleida Labs, we were a source licensee.
- I wrote a book, “3D Graphics Programming in Windows” for Windows 3.1 published in 1994. Wrote a from scratch rendering system that combined a polygon preview renderer with a ray traced final renderer using a shared camera system.
- I went to Dynamix in 1995 and worked on several DX2 games, and am listed in Moby Games.
Alex St John, the original DirectX evangelist, hired me to be the Direct3D evangelist in 1996.
- After 4 years of touring the world and helping Direct3D take over PC gaming, I moved to be the D3D SDK PM. I did that for DX8, DX8.1, and DX9. And designed and delivered the 1st ever D3D full day SIGGRAPH tutorial for SIGGRAPH 2001, Course 52.
- Then I left to join ATI where I helped manage the ATI-MS relationship for a couple of years. While I was there I helped scope and manage the Theater 550 chip program for Media Center 2005 for a truly high quality PC TV tuner chip and card.
- Then I came back to MS and worked on the VS SDK and Flight Sim X.
- I left Flight Sim to join Larrabee, 4 months before Microsoft closed the studio.

ScriptX, DirectX, and Flight Sim X are the coolest things I have worked on. It’s totally coincidental that they all had X in their names. Really it is. :-).

That catches us up to the currrent time. I have to say, I am pretty excited about getting to help developers take advantage of Intel graphics hardware and over time you are going to hear more about what we plan next.

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned!

Categories: Game Development, Graphics & Media, Intel SW Partner Program, Performance and Optimization, Software Tools
Tags: Gaming, graphics, Intel, Samples, Sandy Bridge, SNB

For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (9)

February 10, 2011 10:04 AM PST Arti Gupta (Intel) Total Points: 12,295 Community Manager

Hi Phil - welcome to the Intel Software Network blog! Your work history is quite impressive. Look forward to reading about how you and your team helps developers take advantage of Intel graphics.

February 11, 2011 4:23 AM PST Adam Lake (Intel) Total Points: 965 Brown Belt

Hey Phil, Look forward to the content you and your team will be producing for Sandy Bridge and Beyond! -adam

February 11, 2011 7:32 AM PST DrBalthar

So can we see any decent Intel OpenGL drivers in the future? (Windows and Linux) Or is OpenGL still zero priority at Intel?

February 14, 2011 1:22 PM PST numerator747 Total Points: 85 Registered User

@DrBalthar Phil is "producing gaming and graphics samples". He is not on the driver team. I suspect all he can do is to forward your issues to the OpenGL driver team.

February 18, 2011 3:06 PM PST Philip Taylor (Intel) Total Points: 1,640 Brown Belt

Numerator, correct, I just work on the team that makes gaming and graphics samples. Of course, with that said graphics driver issues do affect us too. DrBalthar, I just made a post titled "Smartphones and PCs" that mentions OpenGL. My personal opinion is that due to the importance of OpenGL ( and OpenGL-ES ) in the mobile/device space that OpenGL on the PC is going to become more important. Keep filing driver bug issues on the Visual Computing forums so the driver teams at Intel get to see the issues.

February 19, 2011 12:21 PM PST numerator747 Total Points: 85 Registered User

BTW, link to Alex St John is broken.

February 19, 2011 2:15 PM PST Philip Taylor (Intel) Total Points: 1,640 Brown Belt

broken link fixed.

March 16, 2011 5:42 PM PDT Art Scott Total Points: 90 Registered User

Hi Phil. Glad to see Sandy Bridge, SB, has such an accomplished, experienced image-graphics-video thinker-doer. Does the SB HW video codec data path support WPF Polygon fill? Wishing you, Intel and Sandy Bridge the best. Art Scott

June 14, 2011 7:18 PM PDT Gaming Monitor Steve

Great Post. I checked the unbroken link now. Great!

Trackbacks (1)

• Twitter Trackbacks for Intel Gaming and Graphics Samples Blog-Post 1: Introduction – Intel Software Network Blogs [intel.com] on Topsy.com
  February 11, 2011 7:29 AM PST

Leave a comment