Intel Software Network Site Overview

The Russian section of the Intel Software Network (ISN) site is unfairly deprived of the attention of Russian software developers. And I had a desire to shout about this information resource and its contents! So much useful information is in vain idle!


I am not an Intel employee, but I am actively involved in the life of the ISN community. The community unites both Intel programmers and us mortals. Anyone can become a member of ISN, having passed a simple registration. However, to get acquainted with blogs, articles and other materials, registration is not required. They are open and anyone can meet them.

You’ll think: “Everyone can read the articles, also an achievement for me!” Well, of course, not an achievement, but as a programmer it’s a pleasant thing. Here try reading articles on the AMD website. We open the page http://developer.amd.com/documentation/articles/Pages/default.aspx . Now try, for example, going to the " See archived 64-bit Computing articles " section . “FigVam” is called, not one of my passwords is suitable. Same thing with " See archived Parallel Programming " and so on.

It is best to start site navigation from the main page http://software.intel.com/en-us/. If you get to the site for the first time, then it’s wise to delve into the sections “Blogs”, “Forums”, “Tools”, which are available from the main page. If you regularly visit the site, then on the main page you can immediately get acquainted with the list of fresh articles, blog entries and news. In general, the developers of the Russian-language version of the site very successfully implemented the main page, collecting all the links to the main sections on it, but did not overload it with excesses.

Sections that ISN contains:

1. Articles by Russian and foreign authors on programming, code optimization, troubleshooting, using various tools. Articles of foreign authors are accordingly translated into Russian. For articles, as well as for many other materials, you can leave your comments and even enter into a discussion with the author. Here are some article titles for an example:

• Intel Parallel Composer - extension for debugging parallel programs
• Solving the N Queens Problem in Cilk ++
• Visually about floating point numbers
• Secrets to Using Intel Parallel Inspector to Find Multithreading Errors
• A tool for finding potential cache optimizations

There are articles not only of a technical nature, but also devoted to the life of Intel and members of the ISN community:

• ISN Competitions for Software Developers
• Email Intel Software Network Support
• Manycore Testing Lab - Member Projects

2. Blogs. As far as I know, blogs are maintained only by Russian ISN members and entries are not translated from other languages. I am sure that the blog section only benefits from this. I will explain my opinion. Blogs often have humor and jargon. And when translating, it’s extremely difficult to save these components and an interesting live text turns into a strange note that is incomprehensible to the reader. Naturally, the humor of Russian authors is completely understandable to Russians, and you can safely read blogs without fear of meeting something obscure. Here are some sample entries:

• I am younger and again live in the USSR 90s? (Post-holiday delirium)
• Reminder for 1000 cu
• Installing VS2008 Recorded Components
• Software sex change
• Rise of Flight, or Goodbye Piracy!

3. Forums. On the ISN forums, I can notice one important detail. Although they are (so far) an order of magnitude less popular than, say, RSDN.ru, Intel employees are present in them. And this can be a significant help in resolving some issues. Here are some examples of forums:

• Software for mobile systems
• Graphics
• Concurrent programming
• 64-bit application development
• Academic Community Forum

4. Sergey Villanov leads his column at ISN . You may already know his name. At one time, he was the chief editor of Computerra-Online (Computerra.Ru). Now he is a leading analyst at 3DNews.Ru . His column is placed on the cover page of ISN and you can regularly see fresh notes in it with a considerable amount of humor.

Of course, not all that you find on the ISN website is listed. Information on various competitions held by Intel is regularly published here, a description in Russian of various tools is given, presentations are laid out, webinars are held and much, much more.

The soul of the Russian community of software developers on ISN is Dmitry Oganezov. It is he who manages the support and development of the Russian part of ISN. At the same time, he is not an abstract leader, but a living person easily accessible for communication. This I declare based on personal experience. With him, you can easily discuss any issues, ask for help in publishing materials and get it. So, joining ISN you can be sure that you can always get real support from people, rather than run into the soulless mechanisms of the site, as this unfortunately often happens.

Yes, the most important thing. ISN is not a closed, so-called read-only community, but an open one. You can blog here, publish articles, discuss issues with developers from Intel and just with specialists from other companies and your colleagues.

ISN has its own analogue of karma. This is called “status points” here. Depending on the number of points, participants are divided into how many ranks, each of which corresponds to a belt of a certain color. There are green, brown, blue and black belts. Participants who have reached the highest level become the owners of the black belt, are placed in the hall of fame and awarded with a high-performance laptop from Intel.

Once again, I invite you to the ISN website and not just as observers, but as participants and authors! ISN is waiting for everyone!