Q&A with Intel's Reinders on building the next generation of parallel programmers

ZDNet UK has posted a Q&A with James Reinders, Intel’s head of software development products, that asks some interesting questions about Intel’s development tools directions.

Intel logoYou have said developers do not tend to wake up one day and wish they could just start working with parallel code. What do you feel will be the feature that attracts programmers to your new toolkit?

I actually think the key draw will be the option to debug parallel code and identify memory leaks with our Parallel Inspector tool. Although that might not initially sound like the number one consideration for making threaded development techniques a practical reality, this product allows developers to get a view straight to their code inside a Visual Studio environment and zero in on making a parallel program work predictably.

Adding memory-leak detection to the capabilities of our previous Thread Checker product makes for a more complete parallel-programming universe.

ZDNet also asks about the Intel’s Windows emphasis and how they are going to grow their support for Linux, dealing with real world performance versus lab predictions, how Intel is overcoming objections from developers who don’t want to learn new tools, and more. It’s a good, quasi-combative Q&A, which I like. Maybe I’ll try and tone up the fight in my own Q&A’s a little.