Intel yesterday announced the availability of its new INDE suite of cross-platform development tools. INDE stands for the Integrated Native Development Experience, and the suite includes tools for working in C++ and Java. INDE is available in three flavors, which range from free up to $799.
Jeff McVeigh, general manager of performance client and visual computing at Intel, said this new line of development tools is targeted at modern client application developers. “The reality for those developers is that there’s a lot of device diversity: different operating systems, different architectures, some systems are Intel, some are ARM, and there are different IDEs. It’s complicated. They want to target their apps across them all to get the full breadth of solutions, but it’s challenging,” said McVeigh.
“The operating systems providers lock you into those tool chains. It’s difficult to get going on things like Android. How do we simplify developers’ needs, specifically around the logic portions of the code? For people doing C++ and Java development, how do they leverage that investment while still being able to deliver a native look and feel to those devices? It provides the full development code flow from setup, to creation, to compilation, to debug and analysis and deployment for those performance-oriented cross-platform applications,” said McVeigh.
The three versions of the INDE suite include varying levels of tools based on their cost. The free version includes all the development tools needed to build cross-platform client applications. The mid-tier, known as the Pro Version, includes debugging and analysis tools for $299, while the Ultimate Version at $799 also includes the Intel compiler, Threaded Building Blocks, and Intel’s Integrated Performance Primitives.
McVeigh said the tool specifically supports ARM because the staff at Intel wanted the tool suite to be as useful as possible for today’s developers. “Our realization was that to be valuable to the developers there’s a plethora of architectures out there; we need to support ARM as best we can. We don’t have complete consistency on that end, but we provide support for compilation and debug to support [ARM]. We’re providing a one-stop shop for some of the access to platform capabilities, such as h.264, context sensing, OpenCL 2.0, OpenGL ES: things we offered as standalone SDK’s we’re using INDE as a platform for distributing them. We’re going to be using this as the main deployment vehicle of those capabilities,” said McVeigh.
The Intel INDE suite integrates with Visual Studio, Eclipse and Android Developer Studio. The three suites of tools are available now.
