Intel Developers Forum is no more...

[WMGroomAK]

Intel is officially ending their Intel Developers Forum and has cancelled all plans to hold IDF17.  This is some breaking news that came from Anandtech and the IDF17 website.  From the Anandtech article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11279/intel-discontinues-the-intel-developer-forum-idf17-cancelled

Quote

In an announcement posted on the IDF website, Intel has announced that IDF is no more, and that the entire IDF program is ending.

 

Intel has evolved its event portfolio and decided to retire the IDF program moving forward. Thank you for nearly 20 great years with the Intel Developer Forum! Intel has a number of resources available on intel.com, including a Resource and Design Center with documentation, software, and tools for designers, engineers, and developers. As always, our customers, partners, and developers should reach out to their Intel representative with questions.

Just to give some context, according to Anandtech:

Quote

IDF has been Intel's yearly home to major product announcements. This has spanned from CPU announcements like Skylake and Kaby Lake, to storage products like Optane, to networking fabrics like Omni-Path. So the cancellation of IDF means that Intel no longer has a (currently scheduled) venue to announce new products and update the public and investors on their plans. Though what's more interesting is how this will affect developers (both presenting and attending), who were the heart and soul of the show.

Maybe Intel will replace the IDF with a new program or maybe they are seeing a loss from the program as the implementation of some of their technologies and CPU development has slowed a bit.  Do people think this is a good idea?  Will Intel release a new program in IDF's place that will produce better results or provide a more diverse approach to displaying their products?

 

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/intel-developer-forum-idf/san-francisco/2017/idf-2017-san-francisco.html

 

EDIT:  Update from Intel on Anandtech:

 

Quote

Update 13:26 ET (Ian): I just got off the phone with Intel, discussing why IDF is being cancelled. The main reason I was given is that Intel has been changing rapidly over the last two-to-three years, especially as they are changing from a PC-centric company to a data-centric company. With the rise of AI, FPGAs, Optane, IoT, wireless comms, automotive, and the other new areas that Intel is moving into, Intel felt that IDF no longer fills the need when it comes to giving out information. As a result, the decision has been made to find new ways to communicate with the audience (media, developers and companies) and the ecosystem with targeted events. These will be like the recent AI Day or Manufacturing Day, or be connected to partner events, or involve separate geocentric events. So rather than have one big melee on everything, Intel is set to split its message across several different areas in the hope that it accurately digs deep enough into every area. I was told that Intel wants to find a better way to present the experiences in each of the fields, and this is the way to do that.

Sooo, it appears that Intel is planning to have more targeted individual days instead of a mass event highlighting themselves as a company...  I can't help but agree with the Ian (the author) on the fact that this is going to introduce too much opportunity for Intel's message to become disconnected.  I think having something like IDF would allow for more innovation as you can have people from different industries that Intel serves attend something just a bit outside of their specialty and get inspired on ways to implement that tech into what they specialize in.

Edited April 17, 2017 by WMGroomAK
Updated Article

[MoonSpot]

Instead of hosting their own event maybe they can just lease a booth at capsaicin.

 

On a serious note, I'd suspect that intel is reorganizing their advertising/PR budget and is going to be launching a new strategy.  Here's hoping that Intel replies to Ars request for comment.

[Syntaxvgm]

nah brah AMD scared them into doing that haven't you been reading around lately? 3 weeks and intel will stop making CPUs all together and sell of assets. 

[Clanscorpia]

16 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

nah brah AMD scared them into doing that haven't you been reading around lately? 3 weeks and intel will stop making CPUs all together and sell of assets. 

You forget the /s 

[MoonSpot]

23 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

nah brah AMD scared them into doing that haven't you been reading around lately? 3 weeks and intel will stop making CPUs all together and sell of assets. 

3 weaks?!  Dude u shore?  No way day kan hold there breath dat long, ryzen been scooping up all da punani.  The socks market gonna be in a mad tumble cycle when the news hits investors.

[Richtofen_]

if the 7700k is cheaper from intel leaving i'm buying it

[WMGroomAK]

2 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

3 weaks?!  Dude u shore?  No way day kan hold there breath dat long, ryzen been scooping up all da punani.  The socks market gonna be in a mad tumble cycle with the news hits investors.

Love the sarcasm but God that's painful to read...  I do think that this news will have an impact with Intel investors although, it may be offset by Intel holding larger and more events at other tradeshows.  Maybe they'll try to Co-opt more of the functions at events like Computex or CES.  I mean, it's not like there aren't enough technology oriented tradeshows and forums already existing.  It's just that Intel will not have a dedicated event to highlight the new technologies that they and their partner developers are working on.

[MoonSpot]

9 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

Love the sarcasm but God that's painful to read...

If only every stupid idea hurt as much on its way in to ones noggin, eh.

 

9 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

I do think that this news will have an impact with Intel investors although, it may be offset by Intel holding larger and more events at other tradeshows.  Maybe they'll try to Co-opt more of the functions at events like Computex or CES.  I mean, it's not like there aren't enough technology oriented tradeshows and forums already existing.  It's just that Intel will not have a dedicated event to highlight the new technologies that they and their partner developers are working on.

Yea, though I have to assume they already have means to allow for devs to rub shoulders and bounce ideas around through a business portal access accounts, or even a glorified Google+ page.

[NumLock21]

Don't know how much ticket cost to attend IDF, I'm guessing it's probably a lot. Instead of paying 1 ticket for all events, now you have to buy separate tickets, for whatever event you're interested in.

[Notional]

Was that the forum Anita Sarkeesian was part of?

[samcool55]

36 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Don't know how much ticket cost to attend IDF, I'm guessing it's probably a lot. Instead of paying 1 ticket for all events, now you have to buy separate tickets, for whatever event you're interested in.

And if they aren't on the same date and location, a bunch of flight tickets as well...

And a lot more days. I'm not sure companies will like this... In the end usually they decide who goes to where.

[NumLock21]

30 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

And if they aren't on the same date and location, a bunch of flight tickets as well...

And a lot more days. I'm not sure companies will like this... In the end usually they decide who goes to where.

Traveling is time consuming, no company will want to be short staff, all the time. In the end, no one will go to any of them.

Imagine Computex instead of having 3 days of introduction of all components, it's split into 9 different events (A whole PC contain 9 components), spanning the entire year and at different regions of the world.

Quote

With Intel deciding to move to a multitude of different events, I can understand the need to focus on specific parts at each event - if you want to deep on AI, hold an AI event; if you want to go deep on cloud computing, hold a Cloud Day. However, this gives Intel more opportunities to have a disconnected message, and not speak as one, especially if a particular event is split based on region. It also makes it harder to plan from our side, because undoubtedly we have to travel to an event at a few weeks notice that might occur the same time as a holiday that was paid for six months ago. IDF ensured regularity

 

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

Traveling is time consuming, no company will want to be short staff, all the time. In the end, no one will go to any of them.

Imagine Computex instead of having 3 days of introduction of all components, it's split into 9 different events (A whole PC contain 9 components), spanning the entire year and at different regions of the world.

 

True, and with AMD going strong and doing imo a good job with capsaicin (or however you spell it) i won't be surprised if devs turn to AMD instead. In the end it's the devs that need to make it happen.

[NumLock21]

A more non PR version of the article

http://semiaccurate.com/2017/04/17/intel-mercy-kills-idf/

 

Quote

 

Over the last few years, Intel has gone out of their way to not release technical information to anyone, press, developers, and even random onlookers even if they need it for the right reasons. This is not by chance, it was a strategic decision for reasons that SemiAccurate can’t comprehend or rationalize. When you throw a conference to educate developers, it is called Intel Developer Forum mind you, then you might consider actually doing what the conference promised.

Intel didn’t. Nothing exemplified this more than the Sandy Bridge ‘technical’ architecture sessions at IDF 2015. There were two, one for CPU core architecture and one for GPU architecture. The core architecture session was, to put it mildly, a joke.

On the GPU side it was great, they actually included much of the information developers needed and wanted.

When word of this disparity hit Intel management, to their credit they took swift action to rectify the situation.

... the GPU team had been severely reprimanded for, err, doing their job.

...you know, providing developers who paid ~$1500 for a conference to find out about Intel hardware, with the information they needed.

It seem that doing the right thing for paying customers is now a punishable offense at Intel.