So I started by calling professors I know and building a list of ?new professors? I want to contact. I tend to think of picking up the phone first and e-mailing second.  I would love to know how you like to communicate.  It is funny how doing something that I naturally find effortless becomes an effort when it is my job.  Fear not though, I have taken those first steps and I am off and running. I will be contacting many of you to find out how I can help you THINK PARALLEL

Establishing a new relationship is often started with awkward gestures and some fumbling.  Having been an instructor for over 20 years, it is that feeling of a new class being taught to freshman. They are looking to you to instruct them and you are looking to them for signs that they understand. Inevitability there is those moments of crushing silence, where both sides are looking for clues from the other.    In some ways that is how I feel right now.  I want to help you; I need you to help me. 

I guess I need to just pick up the phone and call.

This is actually very surprising to me since all I ever hear is how hard it is to develop code for AMT.  We thought for sure our developers would want to chime in on what features they would want to see simplified.  Needless to say, we won't be able to take this to our AMT engineering teams for input - there is simply not enough data.  Recently, Lance Atencio wrote a blog highlighting our last poll.  In the comments area, one of our SDK developers commented the following:

As a member of one of those product development teams you refer to, I just wanted to emphasize again how important this feedback really is to us. It helps us decide how to allocate our resources and prioritize our projects. So, thanks to you for the poll, thanks to everyone who answered. I especially want to encourage everyone working with Intel AMT to take the time to give us your input: it really does make a difference!

It's too bad that this is not how Social Networks work.  Lately I have been reading the "Groundswell" book and I'm beginning to understand why we get very little feedback from our users.  Here are some stats from our Manageability Community and our Discussion Forum:  In March, our Discussion Forum had 30 new threads (discussions) started with almost 19,000 views.  There were 42 new blogs created in the Manageability topic and they had almost 25,000 views.  Yet only 4 people have chosen to answer our Poll.  Again... Wow. 

We know you are out there, so why do we, at best, get 30 responses on our Polls?  Well, the "Groundswell" Book covers this topic pretty well.  The book segments the Social Media World using a "Social Technographics Profile"  (the groups of people who make up the ecosystem that forms the "groundswell.")

1. Creators (21%):  they make social content - blogs, webpages, upload videos.
2. Critics (37%):  respond to content from others - post reviews, comment on blogs, participate in forums, edit WIKI articles.
3. Collectors (19%):  organize content for themselves or others, use RSS feeds, tags, and voting sites
4. Joiners (35%): maitain profiles on social network sites and visit them
5. Spectators (69%):consumers of the social content such as blogs, videos, podcasts, forums and reviews. This group does not comment but many will look at every single post that a forum gets and may even find great benefit.  They are silent; I call them "Lurkers."
6. Inactives(25%): neither create nor consume

This profile explains a lot, although I think that for some Forums/Communities, the percentages my vary depending on how exciting the topic is.  I think that for our Community, there must be fewer Creators and Critics (those who are creating the most (like me) are being paid to do it, for example.)  And judging from how many new threads vs.  how many views, it might be reasonable to suspect that we have quite a few more Spectators than 69%.

I have had to explain to a number of my Intel Colleagues why their content did not get any comments (it is really strange to put something out there that you find to be great stuff and it is met with silence - one wonders if they should even bother.)  My response is always:  "Look at the number of views and look at the number of downloads - looking at the data is the only way to tell that your content is being consumed."

So, even though Polls aren't seeming to work (because the bulk of our audience are "Lurkers") we will continue to post them!  Our next steps is to try to figure out what our audience needs from Intel AMT and we'll let you all know.  And those who object will certainly let us know (if you are in the right category, that is.) 

My colleagues and I will now attempt to form the future of Intel AMT by telling "you" our audience, what you need and correcting that should someone tell us otherwise.  (Big Grin!)

I wanted to touch on some of the resources that are available to get your game to that next level -

For those of you in the process of designing you game, why not include Physics algorithms to give it that real-world behavior? I don?t know if you saw it or not, but you can now download a FREE evaluation copy of the Havok tools! The evaluation is a binary only bundle that includes libraries, samples, and technical documentation for software developers. They have also included the Havok Behavior Tool - a great way to add physically aware behaviors to your 3D characters. If you haven't already, check out the Havok downloads here: http://software.intel.com/sites/havok/

Another great resource for those developing mobile aware applications is the Intel Laptop Gaming TDK, version 2.1. This kit is a collection of API's for network connectivity, power management, display information, processor information, and now includes functions to add Ad-Hoc Peer-to-Peer networking capabilities. By including these functions in your code, you can effectively make your game "mobile aware" with very little overhead from you. We are hoping to see some innovate uses of the TDK with the Game-On-The-Go category. Check it out here: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-laptop-gaming-technology-development-kit/

Last but not least, have you checked out our new Intel Graphics Performance Analyzer yet?
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa/. This new tool suite allows you to understand where the system and graphics engine is spending its time, and gives developers an opportunity to tune their code for the graphics parts. Think Vtune for Graphics parts. Is an excellent tool and worth a check out.

These are just a few of the resources out there to help you get your game to the next level. I'd like to hear what YOU typically use to develop a game. Leave me a comment!

Thanks for reading, Happy Coding!

Eric

This was my 15th trip to China and 4th trip to Vietnam over the last decade or so. Anyone visiting these nations is struck by the pace of change. The change is not random. It results from the focused actions of the governments and the industry of the people.

In this period of economic transition, governments have a crucial role in positioning their nations for long-term competitiveness. No one can do it alone - collaboration through public-private partnerships, a long-term view, high expectations from the education system, and the willingness to make and implement tough decisions are essential.

Looking at the stimulus package that China is implementing you get an idea of how they are looking forward in the 21st Century. The package includes many IT and physical infrastructure items as well as recognizing that incorporating the 800 million rural Chinese in any growth plan is absolutely critical. I moderated a forum in Beijing on Rural IT and what role it will play in bringing educational, health care and economic development advances. There was great enthusiasm for the topic.

And in Vietnam, I also saw the government taking many of the right steps - liberalizing telecoms, increasing access to PCs and broadband, and fostering a pipeline of talent. Although a socialist country, competition is at the cornerstone of many of Vietnam’s initiatives - e.g. telecom liberalization. Vietnam now has some of the lowest broadband rates in the region. Demand in urban areas for DSL currently outstrips supply - a good problem to have.

Vietnam needs to maintain the pace of telecom liberalization - with fixed DSL approaching its cost limit, WiMAX represents a fast and cost effective way for Vietnam to increase broadband penetration in both metro and rural areas.

After visiting both countries I remain convinced of the importance of digital literacy in our knowledge-based global economy. China has already worked with Intel to train over 1 million teachers on how to incorporate technology into the class room. On this trip we and Vietnam’s Ministry of Education announced our intention to put connected PCs in the hands of 1 million Vietnamese teachers and train them as well. Additionally we awarded 28 scholarships to talented Vietnamese engineering students who will complete their studies at Portland State University and then commence work with Intel upon their return home.

China and Vietnam are both working to foster an innovation economy and be better positioned for long-term national competitiveness. I see this trend everywhere including in the United States where President Obama’s stimulus package includes funds for broadband, digital health records, math and science education, basic research and much more.

While these national stimulus plans are good business opportunities for the technology industry, in the longer term there will be more emphasis on IT and its importance for education, health care, and economic development. The long-term impact on individuals worldwide could be more far-reaching. Perhaps that is the sunlight we see at the end of this economic recession.

Parallel Extension will offer a lot of interesting features related to multi-core programming. So, developers face many questions:

? ¿Is .Net 4.0 going to be backward compatible with my existing threading code? Luckily, the answer to this question is YES. You will be able to keep the existing code running while taking advantage of the new features. Besides, it will run faster because there are a lot of improvements in previous features offered by .Net 3.5.

? ¿Will I be able to take advantage of my training in threaded and concurrent programming? Another YES. Parallel Extensions offer new features that simplify the many multi-core and concurrent programming tasks. Your existing knowledge will be very useful to begin working with these shortcuts. You will see a lot of tasks really simplified. However, you have to understand what you?re doing in order to avoid problems.

? ¿Can I combine previous threading mechanisms with Parallel Extensions? Yes. You have to be careful with some issues. However, if you understand what you?re doing, it will work fine. For example, you can use a ThreadPool combined with PLINQ. If you use the right parameters to specify the degree of parallelism for the ThreadPool and PLINQ, you will be able to exploit the right number of cores.

? As they offer high-level concurrency structures, ¿Do I have to forget about hardware? No, no and no. Understanding multi-core hardware is the key to a successful parallelized application. A paradigm shift is needed.

Developers will be able to convert their code as needed in order to take full advantage of .Net 4.0 Parallel Extensions. There is no need to reconvert all the existing multithreading code. However, you?d rather take advantage of the new features as soon as possible.

Our team is a cross-geo team - made up of a development / engineering team in Bangalore and business stakeholders / program managers in the US. Even though we were delivering good, on-time releases using the Waterfall Methodology, we felt that the team could do better. The quality of our releases started to wane with lots of post-production defects. There were heroic efforts from some individuals and clearly they were leading, but a good number of folks in the team were followers. Working late nights and weekends was a commonly observed behavior. Our stakeholders wanted more frequent releases (at least 2 or more per quarter). Our attrition rates in the team were also quite high - touching 30% in 2006.

Clearly we needed a better approach for Software Development. to resolve some of these challenges Agile was starting to get quite popular in 2007. As a management team, we talked about introducing Agile in our team. We shared our analysis of the situation with the team and also our rationale for introducing Agile. There were many skeptics in the team, there were also a few that believed in it and were willing to give it a try. We had driven the Agile adoption purely top-down. There are always risks associated with such an approach. Firstly, the team does not accept the changes easily, they start resisting it. Secondly, it was quite easy to go back to old ways of operating.

This is when we decided to get some external consulation help and hired some Agile coaches. This approach worked well for us. The coaches trained us on the methodology, showed us how its done and practically hand-held us through the adoption. They were with us for almost 6 months and once we gained some confidence in our ability to do it ourselves, we let go of them and started practicing it ourselves.

This was difficult in the beginning, but then we adapted to it quite well. We stuck to the approach. We created metrics to measure our progress. We created surveys to measure the maturity of the Agile practices. We relegiously used retrospectives as a way to improve ourselves. We took "what can go better" feedbacks from the team very seriously, assigned AR's for the team members to go resolve that and made small course corrections.

OK, but what about the results.... The results we achieved through this process was very good. Quality improved significantly. Productivity of the team improved 3X. Our stakeholders are happier. Team is happy (0% attrition and no overtime worked in the last 2 quarters).

We have more to go in this journey, but its immensely gratifying to see that teams can achieve lot of great things, if they work hard at it and stick to a strategy.

I'll share some best practices we've learnt through our Adoption of Agile in my future blogs. Stay Tuned !!

Raj