Intel® Developer Forum 2015 took place August 18 – 20 in San Francisco. We presented a “Tech Chat” on Intel® Integrated Native Developer Experience (Intel® INDE), where IDF attendees could ask any questions and discuss this topic in an informal setup, over a 2 hour period of time. Please see https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-inde for more details on Intel INDE.
Unlike regular technical sessions, this gave us an opportunity to openly discuss common developer concerns with using Intel INDE. In this blog post I hope to address some of the most frequently discussed topics for the benefit of other developers.
One of the frequently asked questions was regarding porting existing native code from other architectures to x86, and if Intel INDE has any tools to automate this. While Intel INDE comes with seamless integration with the IDE of your choice for developing cross-architecture native apps, it does not automate porting of existing code to other architectures, including x86.
If your existing code base is mostly C/C++, porting can be as simple as recompiling. But there are a few cases where architecture specific code is being used. This usually involves manual porting, or even rewriting. For code base that is using ARM NEON* instructions, and wants to target x86 architecture, we have an excellent article that provides a semi-automated porting solution along with tips and tricks here:
Another frequently asked question was about the Intel® Context Sensing SDK, which comes bundled with Intel INDE; what capabilities it has, and if it is cross-platform. Context Sensing SDK is available for both Windows* and Android* platforms. It also works on ARM architectures for Android. On Windows, developers can use the C# Context Sensing API, and on Android we have a Java based Context Sensing API. Though the same code may not be used, the API concepts and features are mostly common. This is very helpful for developers to leverage their knowledge of one Context sensing API across different platforms and different architectures.
The Context Sensing SDK has extensive features and capabilities. It goes above and beyond what the native platform APIs provide for detecting and analyzing context. The Context Sensing APIs span over 25 categories - Activity Recognition, Audio classification, Terminal context, Pedometer, Location, Battery, Calendar, Call, Contacts, Device information, Music, Network, Tapping Event Detection, Shaking Event Detection, Lift and Look Event Detection, Instant Activity, Ear Touch Event Detection, Glyph Gesture Detection among others. For a comprehensive list of the APIs and in-depth details please refer to the following article.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/sensing-context-states-datasheet
In addition to Device-based context, Context Sensing APIs also provide Cloud-based Context which requires the user to be online and connected to receive the notifications. Cloud-based Context includes APIs such as Nearby Restaurants, Weather, Geographic, Places etc., among others.
Finally, the most frequently asked question about Intel INDE was if the product is available for free and if developers could use all of the Intel INDE capabilities free of cost. Intel INDE does have a free-of-cost Starter Edition license, which includes Context Sensing SDK, Media libraries, IDE integration, and graphics analyzer tools. We currently have a promotional offer for developers to download the Professional edition for free until January 15, 2016. For more details and Intel INDE edition comparison please refer to the following link.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-inde/try-buy
One other frequently asked topic was about “Media Solutions” - Media SDK for Windows, Media for Mobile, Media Accelerator. As this topic deserves its own space, the IDF 15 San Francisco had a separate Tech Chat that focused entirely on this.
While we received several other questions, these were the most commonly queried topics. We hope the Intel INDE Tech at IDF 15 and this blog post is helpful for the developer audience. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this more, please join our Intel INDE developer forum on Intel Developer Zone here:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-integrated-native-developer-experience-intel-inde
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