Dr. Brown was one of the first members to take advantage of the Intel® Manycore Testing Lab. He shared his experience with the whole community in his blog, A First Look at the Intel Manycore Testing Lab. His feedback was instrumental in helping to validate the MTL usage model.

Dr. Brown recently commented on his path to parallel programming education; "A big turning point in the St. Olaf's parallel computing initiative came at the SIGCSE 2008 conference in Portland, when I heard vendor presentations by Intel (Michael Wrinn) and Google about the need for teaching undergraduates more about parallelism. Those talks sparked a chain of events, and literally launched my collaboration with Libby Shoop of Macalester College  for teaching more parallelism at both colleges. We looked at each other and said, ‘we've got to do something about this." They jointly won a NFS CCLI grant to work on models for incorporating parallelism into curriculums. "They are designed for maximum flexibility," continued Dr. Brown, "so a wide variety of institutions can use them to supplement various standard or locally developed courses."

Professor Brown has been a regular participant in the Academic Community booth at SIGCSE. Last year, his students demonstrated WebMapReduce using Hadoop before going to present to senators and members of congress about the need for teaching more parallelism at a competitive national undergraduate research event Washington DC in the spring of 2010.  

Professors Brown and Shoop led the international ITiCSE 2010 working group on Strategies for Preparing Computer Science Students for the Multicore World. The group comprised over a dozen leaders from academia, industry, and national research laboratories for a two-month electronic debate. Brown says "Then, at ITiCSE in June, we analyzed and compiled a 19-page report that presents recommendations on what to teach about parallelism, how to teach it, and how to form a supportive community for educators, towards a transition for teaching more parallelism in undergraduate CS curricula everywhere."

Professor Brown has recently become a member of the Educational Alliance for a Parallel Future (EAPF), a group of industry and academic leaders seeking to bring more parallelism into computer science education.

 This week, Dr. Brown will again be participating with a demonstration of the Manycore Testing Lab in the Academic Community's booth at SIGCSE 2010 in Dallas, Texas. If you are attending, please come by and congratulate Dr. Brown.

Here is a brief biography provided Dr. Richard Brown:
Dr. Dick Brown is a native of Spokane, WA. He was an undergraduate Washington State University, and earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984). He took a few Computer Science (CS) courses while in college, but he didn't pursue the field in earnest until his first job at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where he began teaching CS courses and created Carleton's first "CS1" introductory course. He then spent a year and a half as a Visiting Scientist at Cornell University (1989-91), working in real-time reliable fault-tolerant distributed computing with Fred Schneider, and consulting on Ken Birman's Isis distributed system before returning to Northfield to teach CS at St. Olaf College. Dick was Director of Computer Science at St. Olaf from 1991 to 2009, and he designed, proposed, and largely implemented St. Olaf's CS major, which replaced the former Concentration program (essentially a minor) in 2002. Over the years, he has created or introduced ten CS courses at St. Olaf. He has directed undergraduate research students in CS each summer since 2003; he served on the national Executive Board of the Council on Undergraduate Research as Division Chair for Mathematics and Computer Science from 2004 to 2007. 

Dick and his wife Susan Dunhaupt have five young-adult children. He is a "dancing fool," was once a semi-professional musician (tuba), and takes a part in community theater once or twice a year.

Starting today, developers can test the scaling of their applications to multi-core using the new Intel® Parallel Universe Portal, a cloud-based scaling analysis tool to help with parallel programming.  There is currently no charge for this service; it is available online here on the Intel Software Network at paralleluniverse.intel.com.

To read more of the story, see the article posted today.

]]> http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/11/17/intel-parallel-universe-portal-a-new-cloud-based-analysis-tool-to-measure-multicore-application-scaling/feed/ 0 http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/10/02/initial-press-and-blog-coverage-of-intel-atom-developer-program/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/10/02/initial-press-and-blog-coverage-of-intel-atom-developer-program/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:38:45 +0000 Amy Barton (Intel) http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/10/02/initial-press-and-blog-coverage-of-intel-atom-developer-program/

Wow! I’m still counting the number of technical press articles, blog posts, forum posts, and tweets we've received since announcing the Intel Atom Developer Program at IDF on Sept. 22 in Paul Otellini's keynote. The Intel Software Network Article, "New Opportunities for Software Developers" went live during Renee James 9/23 keynote which featured a deeper dive announcement of the program.

Here is sample of quotes from major tech press:

ArsTechnica said that our announcement of the Atom Developer Program to develop apps for Atom-based devices was good news: “It's great to see that Intel is attacking this important problem head-on. It's just too difficult to use normal desktop software on a mobile device, so any move that encourages developers to develop applications specifically for mobile screen sizes and input methods is a step in the right direction.”

Tom’s Hardware added, “With the lines separating smartphones from MIDs from netbooks becoming increasingly blurry, it makes sense that someone thought to launch an app store for netbooks.” “Intel doesn’t plan to operate the app stores itself, but it will provide what it calls a technology framework to help Atom customers create stores under their own brands,”

The Wall Street Journal said. “Intel … hopes developers will create simple, downloadable apps—likely starting with netbooks, but later for cellphones, consumer electronics devices and other products.”

“Clearly, Intel as a company is morphing,” wrote BusinessWeek, “Once, it used to make chips that went into computers and other devices. More recently, with the acquisition of Wind River, Intel has been moving to offer software and services, some of which it may offer to consumers directly.”

Some detailed articles came from bloggers after a special briefing with Intel Atom Developer Program Director, Peter Biddle, on Wednesday 9/23:

MORE DETAILS ON THE INTEL ATOM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM |  Mid Moves.com

Get In Early with the Atom Developer Program. (And win!) | Mid Moves.com

Sascha talks to Intel about Netbooks and the Atom Developer Program (Video) | UMPCPortal.com

Sascha Pallenberg on the Intel Atom Developer Program (Video) | Netbooknews.com

Downsizing Multicore Programming Skills to Take Advantage of Intel Atom | Dr. Dobbs

Atom Developer Program: Infos rund um die Webseite | Software-Dev-Blog.de

INTEL ATOM DEVELOPER PROGRAM (APP STORE FRAMEWORK) ANNOUNCED | MIDMoves.com

SiliconANGLE: Live Blog from IDF | SiliconANGLE.com

Lifting the Lid on the Intel Atom Developer Program | SoftTalkBlog.wordpress.com

King Kong and App Distribution | SGEntrepreneurs.com

IDF09: (Video-)Infos rund um das Atom Developer Program |Software-Dev-Blog.de

IDF09. MID NEWS ROUND-UP. | MIDMoves.com

VODCAST FROM IDF09: MOBILE ROUND-UP. | MIDMoves.com

Several videos were published on YouTube during IDF. Still more to be posted with Steve "Chippy" Paine (MIDmoves.com and UMPCportal.com) and Sascha Pallenberg (netbooknews.com): http://bit.ly/AtomAppVids

And here is a sample of more blog coverage…over 6000 blog posts (from blogsearch.google.com) and still counting!

Intel Atom Developer Program for Mobile Devices ~ EDA Blog

Intel Atom Developer Program launched

Intel Atom Processor Developer Program For Mobile Devices To Spur ...

The Intel Atom Processor Developer Program - x86 Processor Endgame

IAC at Intel Developer Forum | IT Knowledge Hub

Computer Upgrade Guides Reviews Howto Hardware Database

IDF 2009: Intel's Priority: A Total Mobile Computing Experience ...

Intel Kicks Off Atom-Centric Software Development Program ...

Software ottimizzato per netbook con l'Intel Atom Developer ...

Intel offering good perks for App Developers : GadgetMix.com!::..

100 netbooks offerts pour les 100 premières applications ATOM ...

News für Kommunikationsprofis -

Un Appstore chez Intel ! | Le Journal du Geek

<and over 6000 more…!>

For the latest Google Blog search on this program, click here. 

It is exciting to see the media coverage and interest in the industry and especially from developers. Stay tuned as we continue to roll out this opportunity for developers and launch the App Stores.

]]> http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/10/02/initial-press-and-blog-coverage-of-intel-atom-developer-program/feed/ 0 http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/09/29/video-gaston-hillars-developer-perspective-on-intel-atom-developer-program/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/09/29/video-gaston-hillars-developer-perspective-on-intel-atom-developer-program/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:34:25 +0000 Amy Barton (Intel) http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/09/29/video-gaston-hillars-developer-perspective-on-intel-atom-developer-program/ Intel Software Network Black Belt Developer, Gaston Hillar, spoke with me on video at the Intel Developer Forum last week about the opportunities he sees for developers to participate in the new Intel Atom Developer Program.  Gaston appeared onstage, during Corporate Vice President Renee Jame's keynote, showing his application Gaston's Playground on Windows and Moblin, developed for netbooks and MIDS.

It was a pleasure to meet Gaston in person, and have the opportunity to ask him a few questions and hear his responses, which I've summarized below.  Watch the full video on YouTube or here on ISN Take Five Videos.

1) What opportunities does the Intel Atom Developer Program offer to software developers?

It is a very interesting program for developers. The netbook market is developing, and the program provides an opportunity to reuse code.  Most applications only require small changes to target netbooks and MIDs.  Great opportunity to create applications with visual effects -- you can use hyperthreading to work with asynchronous code, and give the user another experience using these devices.  And, you can make money.

2) What about the community experience provided by Intel?

Intel has a great relationship with developers.  When you work with Intel tools, or the Intel Software Developer Community, you find a lot of people who provide information in forums, blogs, SDKs, and documentation that is important to develop an application.  The community experience at Intel is adding value by helping you find solutions and answers quickly, to spend more of your time on writing the apps. That makes a big difference for developers.

3)  What about the opportunity to sell components through the developer catalog?

This is even a bigger opportunity.  If you want to use a component in your application, you have to search in different communities and websites.  If you go to a community you can browse the components and libraries.  You can chose your components, taking into account reputation, and find documentation. Plus it is Intel creating this program so it is different.  I can use the components to create compelling applications.  Not just the simple components, but ones optimized for the Intel platforms. There is no other place for developers to sell components. This will create developer -to developer (or D2D) community.

4) What was your experience developing your application for a netbook device?

It was really a great experience.  The first thing you must target for developing an Atom-based device is to take one, and think about the different ways you would use this new device.  You have a different device, different screen size, resolution, battery life.  The Intel Atom processor is a powerful microprocessor, has hyper-threading.  Get the mobile device first, then design, then write code.  Or, adapt your existing code from desktop computers.  For my application, I changed it, and made it work with Moblin, and to take advantage of the power of the Atom processor.  I used many Intel tools, VTune to tune and check for hotspots.  Mobile internet users don't want to wait.  Tune the applications.  It doesn't matter if you remove filters, if it helps.  And, everything works, on Moblin or Windows.

5) Any final comments?

Netbooks changed the market.  Intel Atom processors changed the market.  This new developer program provides developers with a unique opportunity.  And, this is a big day for component developers.  They can create components and libraries, and get revenue from that.

Thank you Gaston, for taking the time out of your busy schedule at IDF for the interview with me.

If you missed Gaston onstage during the keynote, be sure to watch the replay of Renee James' keynote on the IDF site.  The Intel Atom Developer Program starts at ~40:00 minutes, with Gaston onstage starting at ~45:00.

More details are also in the article Maryann & I just published:  New Opportunities for Software Developers Start Now.  Join the Challenge.

Don't forget to follow the program on Twitter: @develop4atom and/or on Facebook and see our videos on YouTube.

Enter our ‘Just Ask’ contest now through July 31, 2009. The 50 best questions, as judged by Intel Software Network moderators, will be answered by Intel software engineers and experts.  For each selected question, the submitter will receive a $25 gift card to ThinkGeek.com.  There is no limit to the number of questions you can ask.  Each unique question counts as an entry.

Tweet your question(s) to @intelsoftware, and include #ISNTOPIC in the tweet.  Or, enter your question(s) into this form.  Complete details are at: http://intel.com/software/justask.

Need ideas?  See what other developers are asking.  While you're there, rate their questions.

We will announce the winners on August 6, 2009 at 3:00 p.m. PDT via direct tweet as well as posting on the Just Ask site.

Tell us. . . What development questions are on your mind?

• Parallel Programming Talk, 8AM Pacific: Join hosts Aaron Tersteeg and Clay Breshearsas they chat with Joe Duffy of Microsoft about the Microsoft Parallel Extensions to .NET and Microsoft Task Parallel Library.  Joe Duffy is the lead developer and architect for Parallel Extensions to .NET. He is the author of two books: Concurrent Programming on Windows and Professional .NET Framework 2.0
• Teach Parallel, 10AM Pacific: HPC Centers can help support curricular change. Professor Tom Murphy interviews Scott Lathrop, Blue Waters Technical Program Manager for Education & TeraGrid Area Director for Education, Outreach and Training.
• Visualize This!, 2:30 PM Pacific: Join host Arti Gupta to hear Chris Taylor, CEO Gas Powered Games speak about their latest game Demigod and its use of Intel's Graphics Performance Analyzers.

Watch Intel Software Network TV LIVE on Tuesdays and On Demand anytime.

http://intel.com/software/tv

Note:  Live shows are typically available on-demand within 48 hours of broadcast time.

http://intel.com/software/tv

Here is the show schedule for Tuesday, June 16th.

8:00AM PACIFIC, June 16
Parallel Programming Talk with Clay Breshears & Aaron Tersteeg with special Guest, Duncan McCallum, CEO Cilk Arts Multicore Programming Software

Episode 35: Duncan will be give a quick overview of Cilk++ and answering questions about using the technology. Cilk++ provides a simple set of extensions for C++, coupled with a powerful runtime system for multicore-enabled applications. Cilk++ enables rapid development, testing, and deployment of high performance multicore applications.

Watch Live: www.intel.com/software/tv or listen to podcast at: www.blogtalkradio.com/MulticoreSoftware

Show Notes: intel.com/software/tersteeg

10AM PACIFIC, June 16
Teach Parallel with Paul Steinberg and guest Professor Charlie Peck of Earlham College: "Teaching Parallelism to Students; Teaching Parallelism to Faculty"

As a member of the Supercomputing Conference's Education Program Steering Committee (2007-2011), Professor peck is one of a group of academics developing and delivering curriculum for teaching high performance computing, Parallelism and computational science to undergraduate faculty and students. Working with colleagues from the Supercomputing Education Program, he is co-PI of the LittleFe project. LittleFe is a low-cost, portable, computational cluster primarily used for high performance computing and computational science education, outreach, and training.

2:30PM PACIFIC, June 16
Visualize This! Host Arti Gupta interviews Scott Crabtree

Scott Crabtree, Intel Engineering Manager, will share the game demos developed by his team and discuss tips and techniques on how to use parallel programming techniques combined with the power of multicore processors for enhanced game performance.

Be sure to tune in and watch live on June 16th. If you miss the live broadcasts, all shows are available on-demand at the same link, typically within a day or so of broadcast time.

For more on the launch of Intel Software Network TV on June 9th, read the announcement here.   Follow @isntv on Twitter for notice when a show is going to be live, or subscribe to the RSS feed to receive high quality downloads of new show episodes as they become available.

June 9, 8 AM Pacific: Parallel Programming Talk with  Aaron Tersteeg, Dr. Clay Breshears and special guest David Patterson of UC Berkeley and UPCRC.  <Kudos to the team, this one went very well, and will be available On-Demand starting tomorrow>

June 9, 10 AM Pacific: Teach Parallel, a new show for parallel programming in academia. Hosts Paul Steinberg and Professor Tom Murphy of Contra Costa College.

June 9, 12 PM Pacific: A special chat with guest and Intel Software Network blogging hero, Doug Holland.

June 9, 2:30 PM Pacific: Visualize This! Show host and Intel Software Network Game Development Community Manager Arti Gupta will talk to Visual Computing Community Manager, Steve Pitzel. Steve will introduce the new Artists/Animators communityand showcase resources available.

June 9, 4:00 PM Pacific: A chat with special guest David Stewart on the recently released Moblin 2.0 beta, with hands on demos.

Watch TODAY... and here is the behind-the-scenes video: http://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/intel-software-network-tv/

To hear more about the contest, watch the video with Steve Pitzel, Visual Computing Community Manager:

VIDEO Link: Level Up 2009 - Enter Your Game

Good luck! Enter Level Up 2009 by July 1, 2009 to compete for glory in any of the three categories: Best Threaded Game, Best Game-On-the-Go, and Best Game Optimized for Intel® Graphics. You might win passes to GDC, a high end gaming system, or other prizes.

Have no fear... we've captured many of the Intel activities on video -- sessions, lounge chalk talks, and interviews with developers -- to watch at your leisure. It is Friday afternoon, so why not take a quick break and catch up on videos?

And, while you're at it, subscribe to one of our video feeds, so you don't miss anything. Your choice:

Feedburner:  http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ISNVideos copy into your favorite reader.
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/intelswnetwork 
iTunes: itpc://feeds2.feedburner.com/ISNVideos

My Favorite videos published so far?

A Chat with Justin Lassen, Composer, Remixer, Producer

GDC'09 Threading Introduction - All-Day Session with Source Code Download, broken down into a 9-part series for more consumable viewing.

Optimizing Game Architecture with Threading Building Blocks by Brad Werth 

Intel GPA: Capturing Mass Market Graphics Performance by Aaron Davies

Intel SW and HW Architect, Tom Forsyth on SIMD Programming for Larrabee (full session video to be posted in one month - stay tuned)

Our most watched GDC video is the Project Offset Pre-Fab Teaser.

Check them all out at www.intel.com/software/videos.  For Visual Computing videos (only), find them at: http://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/category/visual-computing/1/1/

Happy Friday!

Now that we've reached that milestone, I've asked those who have been closely involved in the program to blog about specific things going in on in their regions of the world.  This is truly a global program, reaching to 72 countries worldwide.  So, stay tuned over the next few days to hear more.

For now, read the story, and check out the video with Scott Apeland.  There are  More Academic Community Videos including Parallel Programming Modules and discussions on Sequential Programming.

First - what is the Future of Multicore and how is this vision tied into Marks' Sci-Fi writing?

Second - we pulled out a netbook, and asked Mark what he thought of the current designs, and where the industry should go w/netbooks.  Are they here to stay?  Well, in their current form, probably  not... see what Mark says. See: Future of Netbooks.

Fascinating.  I kept my questions short - so Mark could have most of the air-time.  Mark is coming back in December - what questions would you like to ask him?

UPDATED: Removed embedded videos as they were both starting automatically and creating a weird stereo effect.  Development team will fix soon, I hope.

We launched a new video hosting platform on Sept. 25th with the update you've seen across the Intel Software Network. All of the videos successfully migrated over to the new hosing site, however the posting dates, categorizations, and thumbnail images were lost. All videos, new and old, showed Sept. 22-24 as their posting dates with scrambled categories. In the words of Inigo Montoya, we had to "go back to the beginning," migrating, and re-migrating until everything came out the right way. Kudos to our web development team, a.k.a. Westley and Fezzik, who have restored order to Florin, uh, I mean the Take Five Site."

Take a look at the new site to see new features including unique URLs for each video and category, category RSS feeds, and buttons making it easier to share, embed, and leave comments. We have also launched a syndication program of the videos, so now you'll find them all on YouTube, GoogleVideos, and Blip.TV. A few other capabilities such as the link to blogs and downloads will be restored in the next few weeks on Take Five.

I'd love to hear from you about what you like, and don't like about the new video site. We have time to make changes.

I'm listening. So is Westley... "As...you...wish....!"

[Note: Princess Bride analogies aside, credits go to Shashin Shah and Rakesh Kumar and team for their long development hours to make this work.]

Interview w/Sverre Jarp, CERN CTO:

CERN Testimonial on working with Intel:

CERN Launching Large Hadron Collider in 2008:

CERN Presentation at Intel on Hadron Collider Launch (part I):

CERN Presentation at Intel on Hadron Collider Launch (part II):

CERN Presentation at Intel on Hadron Collider Launch (part III)