Event Overview

Intel made an impact on android software developers in Boston with its diamond sponsorship of AnDevCon – The Android Developers Conference – held on July 29-31, 2015 at the Boston Sheraton.

AnDevCon identifies itself as the biggest, most info-packed, practical Android conference in the world. A team of Intel® Software engineers and experts, showcased and educated developers with demos of Intel tools for Android – including Intel® INDE and the Intel® XDK. Intel technical experts shared their knowledge and expertise via a keynote presentation, technical sessions, hands-on workshops and lightning talk. Attendees visiting the Intel Software booth learned how to create Android apps using Intel tools, optimize their apps for IA, and partner with Intel to create great apps.

Three partners demonstrated their Android solutions on Intel platforms at the Intel Software booth - two Intel® Software Innovators and one app testing partner.

Keynote

Jeff McVeigh, General Manager of the Intel® Developer Products Division, presented the keynote “How Software Creates the Sizzle on Mobile Silicon” to over 300 developers held on Thursday, July 30. McVeigh shared how Intel’s software initiatives and tools improve the underlying capabilities of Android and allow developers to easy create “sizzling” experiences that stand out in the crowded app marketplace. Attendees received first-hand exposure to the latest Intel platform capabilities, such as Intel RealSense Technology for natural user interfaces, and popular cross-platform tools that assist in accelerating mobile app development and time-to-money.

In front of a crowd of 300 in the keynote, McVeigh introduced the new Multi-OS Engine, a beta feature of the Intel INDE suite of cross-platform/cross-OS tools. This new feature allows Java developers to easily reuse Java code to create Android and iOS mobile apps. Attendees were encourage to apply for the Multi-OS Engine early access program.

Intel® Software Booth Demos

Hundreds of AnDevCon attendees visited the Intel Software booth to learn about x86-Android tools and technology, including Intel® INDE, Intel® XDK, Intel® System Studio and the Crosswalk Project.

They also had the chance to get information on real device cloud testing through partner Testdroid and have 1:1 conversations with Intel Software Innovators Peach Pellen, Black Gate Games CTO and Infrared5 Founder Chris Allen.

For a complete overview of Intel support for Android, booth visitors learned about the great knowledge, tools and community that the Intel® Developer Zone for Android offers.

Technical Sessions, Classes & Lightning Talk

Intel Android experts participated in five technical sessions and classes. Lead Technical Consulting Engineer Kevin O’Leary delivered an in-depth technical session on “Performance and Power Profiting of Intel® Based Android Systems. He presented how Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) events can be used to correlate changes in sleep states (C1-Cn, S1-Sn, D1-Dn) to the executed software at the time. He also presented how changes in processor core frequency states (P1-Pn) can also be mapped to currently active executed code.

Intel® Software Innovator Chris Allen, Founder of Infrared 5, gave a session on “Periscope and Meerkat: Make Your Own Live Streaming App in Ten Minutes!” The class dove into the challenges and intricacies of live streaming for mobile. Attendees were able to see how to create a one-to-many live broadcaster and viewer for Android in a matter of minutes. Attendees then discussed where mobile live streaming applications are going and what kinds of experiences can be expected in the future

Ramesh Peri, Intel Architect of Android tools, led a session on “Tools and Techniques for understanding Threading Behavior in Android.” The session covered tools and techniques that can be used to understand the threading behavior of an Android application that are applicable across many phone and tablet platforms. Peri illustrated capabilities of analysis tools, shared data collected by running them on code snippets that have different threading patterns, and showed how to interpret the data provided by these tools.

Intel Sr. Software Engineer Bob Spencer led a class on “Crosswalk and the Intel® XDK – Bringing High Performance Hybrid HTML5 Applications to the Masses.” The class showed developers the power of Crosswalk Web runtime and the Intel XDK to build hybrid HTML5 applications. Other class highlights included performance gains for 2D/3D games, WebGL games, and general applications. The class ended with learning how companies like Sencha, Google, and Ionic are using Crosswalk to power their HTML5 applications.

Sr. Software Engineer Sravanthi Venkata and Intel® INDE Chief Architect Peng Tu led the class “Develop and Analyze Android Applications with Intel® INDE.” Attendees saw INDE in action while developing Android and cross OS apps with rich media experience. Attendees also learned how to analyze CPU and GPU performance for their game and graphics apps.

Margaret LaBrecque gave the quick lightning talk “Unleash the Power of Web Innovation”.

Prizes, Raffles & Selfies...

At the conference, Intel Software provided two opportunities for attendees to win Intel devices – Dell Venue 8 7000 tablets. Each day of the exhibit, two lucky winners who participated in the booth Passport Program were awarded a tablet. The updated Intel® Selfie App for Android also provided attendees with an opportunity to win a tablet. Each day an attendee was awarded with “Best Selfie Photo of the Day”. To win, attendees were asked to download the app from the Google Play store, snap a selfie, add in the #AndroidOnIntel hashtag and post to Twitter.