Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled
by Ryan Smith & Ian Cutress on April 17, 2017 11:15 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Trade Shows
- IDF 2017
In a bit of breaking news this morning, it appears that Intel has decided to cancel their Intel Developer Forum tradeshow going forward, including this summer’s expected IDF17.
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.
Previously, Intel had stated that there would not be an IDF in China this year. However an IDF was still expected in the US, albeit with a “new format.” Prior to today’s update, Intel’s IDF page stated the following (as can be seen on this cached copy of the page).
We are making changes to the Intel Developer Forum. This fall the event in San Francisco will have a new format and we will not be hosting an event in China. More details to come soon.
Meanwhile the official Moscone Center Calendar had (and still has) Intel reserving Moscone West from August 15th through the 17th.
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.
While it seems highly unlikely that Intel is doing away with trade shows and launch events entirely, it’s clear that something is afoot at Intel, and that as a result the traditional IDF is gone. With Intel's product roadmap becoming increasingly elongated and less aligned to a yearly cadence, a yearly tradeshow is obviously a harder event to hold and justify. But what will replace their combination trade show and venue for product announcements remains to be seen.
We’ve reached out to Intel for more information, and will update this story if we hear anything further.
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.
Personally, I feel the loss of an event like IDF is frustrating. Here was an annual event, usually held around the same time each year, that went deep into how Intel is pushing their portfolio in the PC space. In the last couple of years, the event expanded into IoT and automotive, and attendances kept rising (despite some of the hardware talks being attended by six people - trust me it was a fun talk nonetheless). 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 - there were keynotes on the important topics, and it was a chance for Intel to lay all the high-end cards on the table (and have everyone there to talk to). As noted, Intel also removed IDF Shenzhen from the event schedule. If Intel now plans to have something like an 'x86 developer conference' and have it held on the same day at different global locations, that only adds to the logistical complexity, and splits the key members of the team giving the talk(s) or answering the questions. Again, I can see Intel's reasoning for wanting to focus given the spectrum of markets it is now moving into, but IDF will be missed.
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CajunArson - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
Something is "afoot" at Intel you say?YES IT IS: https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/when-the...
BrokenCrayons - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
That was the best joke ever!ddriver - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
Intel has officially lost the plot. Years of CPU barely incremental mediocrity, a new low bar on nvme for the p600, the hypetane fail, the last epic fail AT didn't even reflect - they are now pushing defective desktop parts with failed iGPU as dual channel, 16 PCIE lanes E series, as if the E line wasn't already trashed by Ryzen and it needs to push performance and features even lower.ddriver - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
looks like they are changing horses. But I am not entirely optimistic here, if they failed at the market they have practically wrapped around their finger, what's to expect when entering uncharted territory? Intel is a very big and bloated corporation, the reason it was too late and ultimately failed to gain any sizable market in mobile device platforms.Their "IoT" products are piss poor value regardless of the price point. "AI"? Gonna have a hard time there as well, after their accelerator completely failed to materialize as a GPU, and is pretty much a meh in HPC, they will now try to shove it as a "machine learning" platform. Alas, it's design is fundamentally inefficient in machine learning, which benefits architectures, optimized for maximum throughput of small integers. And not that they can't design such an architecture, however, it is already late to the show and it is not even announced to be in the works.
Thus they do what big bloated corporations always do - go for nonsense acquisitions in hope it will materialize in profit or at the very least, relevance.
Turning into a "data-centric company" - woot, great news, because we cannot have enough of them private information hoarding, mining and selling to the highest bidder. They are such a benefit to society.
Way to go Intel. Also, don't forget to assure us how Moore's law is alive and well.
Kevin G - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
Intel's AI accelerator is from their Nervana acquisition, not something that they bought up in-house like Knight's Landing (which came from Larabee's grave). The AI/deep learning focused part is called Knight's Mill and due later this year. Knight's Landing, that is actually doing pretty OK in HPC and Omnipath had a few adopters.They have been rather mediocre on recent desktop releases, Optane hasn't lived up to the hype (and currently mismarketed) and the idea of Kaby Lake in an ethusiast socket is just stupid (and I'm holding out hope that it is just a fake rumor as that is just stupid).
The one thing Intel has going for it is Sky Lake-EP and the platform it is built around. On paper it looks to be rather impressive and something they could used as the highight for this year's IDF.
SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
I thought the Xeon Phi was for their deep learning solution?JermaineWilliams - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Right. Let's face it, since Intel was awarded the Apple contract, (and Apple stopped using IBM/Motorola PowerPC RISC platform it honestly doesn't even need to advertise.The most recent ads featuring Jim Parsons (Sheldon from Big Bang Theory) are less of an ad and more gloating that "98% of the Cloud runs on intel".
It wasn't long ago when we also had Sun/Sparc platforms as well. But it seems Oracle bought SunMicrosystems just to file a Java lawsuit against Android and Google.
If you ask me, way too many things in technology are influenced by Apple.
ddriver - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Not for long. Intel is about to get trashed even worse in servers than it was trashed in pretty much every aspect where performance matters in desktops.Intel is becoming a hype company, but behind their cockiness hides the fact they don't have anything aside form a huge pile of cash they made on their monopoly, which itself was made on illegal bussiness practices.
The move of apple from Power to x86 also coincided with the company's shift from making decent hardware for professionals to making overpriced toys for vain posers. It didn't really made all the difference, considering the macos market share is the measly 5%.
In this aspect, I don't feel the the loss of the IDF itself is even a loss, as the event already was all about making a big deal of not that big "innovations", it was about hyping, and had nothing to do with development whatsoever.
So they hire popular dorks to claim how superior they are. This would hardly be needed if that was indeed the case. Sure, they are very big and rooted deep, which allowed them to do great even when their entire lineup was netburst garbage, but having that much money, IP and factories and doing so little with it qualifies for "pathetic" in my book.
And speaking of pathetic, they probably hit a new low with this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5-gKsQgcRo
And I'd say behind that "hip confidence" display they know how pathetic it really is, which is why they have disabled both comments and even rating for the video.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
"Intel is becoming a hype company, but behind their cockiness hides the fact they don't have anything aside form a huge pile of cash they made on their monopoly, which itself was made on illegal bussiness practices."Lets be fair to intel here, yes, what they did was illegal. They dug a pothole for AMD, AMD promptly took the shovel and dug a grave, sat in it, and started burying themselves in it before lisa came around and hauled them out.
ddriver - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
How was any of what happened AMDs fault? I also wouldn't be hasty to deem them "hauled out" until they actually get in the net green.