Intel® Developers and Innovators were busy over the last month! Here’s an update on what the Intel® Software Innovators, Intel® Black Belt Software Developers, and Intel® Student Ambassadors were up to around the globe.

BIG EVENTS

SIGGRAPH 2017: The world’s largest computer graphics and interactive technique conference featured five days of interactive, rotating demos from Intel Software Innovators. Yahya Mirza of Aclectic Systems Inc. demonstrated how to simulate high-quality 3D smoke. Eskil Steenberg used a highly threaded application to map complex 3D lighting setups via utilization of multicore processing. Well Told Entertainment exhibited their in-development virtual reality (VR) game, Foglands, which uses experimental locomotion and physics. Justin Lassen, audio director for the entire Spiderman Homecoming VR experience, gave an inside look at how the game was developed.

BLACK BELT SPOTLIGHT

Martin Foertsch& Thomas Endres showcased of their Avatar telepresence system using the Nao* robot, Oculus* Rift, Intel^® RealSense™ camera and Intel^® IoT Gateway as well as Genuino 101* technology at Nagoya University, Softbank Robotics, TeamLab, and Product Hunt Tokyo.

Abhishek Nandy wrote an article on Setting up the New Intel® DLSDK Tools Beta and also wrote an article with video tutorials on how easy it is to set up the Intel® Deep Learning SDK Beta Tool. He also spoke at the Intel^® Nervana AI Academy Seminars in both Durgapur and Kolkata. In addition, Abhishek spoke on Commercial IoT and Intel at Amity University and also spoke at the IoT Knowledge Share in Kolkata.

Gaston Hillar gave a private training to 10 software engineers during a hands-on lab where he explained how to work with sensors and actuators with Python*, Intel^® Joule™ module, and the Intel^® MRAA and UPM libraries.

George S. Christopher& Suresh Kumar Gunasekaran spoke at the Young Students Meetup in Chennai, teaching the students about coding and inspiring them with the journey. 

INNOVATOR SPOTLIGHT

Asia Pacific

At Samsung* Indonesia Next App 4.0, Adam Ardisasmita inspired developers to make the next big thing in Indonesia in the gaming and VR industry, giving example of a VR project collaboration between Samsung and Intel.

Benjamin Mathews Abraham gave a workshop on Controllers, Processors, and the Intel Edison. The workshop was an introduction to processors and microcontrollers, with a focus on real-world applications. He talked about how to go from idea to “productizable” prototype, how the Intel^® Edison board fits in, and how to get started with it.

At the Game Dev Malang Gathering, Frida Dwi Iswantoro, shared how to be a game developer and how Intel’s GameDev Journey can help them, including using tools like the Intel^® XDK. At the Jogja Game Development Meetup he demonstrated how to use those same tools to create a cordova package and develop games using HTML5.

Sourav Lahoti spoke at the Intel in Retail IoT Meetup about how Intel is helping the retail space by providing solutions to enhance IoT products. Karthik MU gave a demo on the Internet of Things with the new Java* 8 to 20 students in Tumur. Rupam Das presented at a one-day health camp and workshop on Lyfas*. Pooja Baraskar discussed commercial IoT and introduced gateways to developers at the Chennai IoT Meetup. Prajyot Mainkar talked about the Intel^® Edison board at the September Monthly Meetup in Goa. Rishabh Banga helped to create an Android* application for IoT using AWS and Dnamodb* during a video training. Firmansyah Saftari shared about the implementation of IoT for Indonesia based on best practices at the Republic of Internet of Things in Bandung.

Siddhant Agarwal presented at the Intel^® Nervana AI Academy Student Workshops in both Kolkata and Jaipur, and gave a training on the Deep Learning Beta Training Tool in Durgapur. Pablo Farias Navarro’sIntro to VR Game Development 2-hour course which covers the development of a simple VR game with Unity* had 150 new enrollments and his Virtual Reality Mini-Degree course which covers the development of 15 R games with unity over 40 hours had 210 new enrollments.

Sanju Mathew gave a demo of his bionic hand and discussed technology involved at Gagnera 2017 conference in Calicut. Also, at the event he spoke on “Engineers of our Present and Evolution of an Idea” was delivered for Engineering Students of Eranad Knowledge City, followed by a group discussion on current advancements in the field of robotics, AI, and Innovative Bio Med Technology. Sanju also did gave a workshop on IoT and connected Devices for engineering students, focusing on using the Intel^® Edison board and Grove Starter Kit and using Python at the Intel^® IoT Workshop in Trivandrum.

South America

Marcelo Quinta gave a talked about IT takeaways from Silicon Valley Startups at the VI Conference de Information in Brazil. Ubiratan Soares spoke with students about architectural decisions for mobile apps, legacy code, professionalism and more at the Semcomp20 – ICMC/USP in Sao Carlos, Brazil. Pedro Kayatt’s latest project, Apocalypse Rider, is a VR arcade motorcycle game where you must prevail the high-speed wasteland roads. At the invitation of Abragames (the Brazilian Association of Games), Pedro talked about how Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and Augmented Reality are going to change how we see and interact with the virtual world.

United States

Harsh Verma spoke at the USDOT Architecture Reference for Cooperative and Intelligent Transportation Workshop #2 in San Jose in which connected vehicles, pedestrian safety, and the role of IoT, wearable devices, and edge processing at roadside infrastructure was discussed. At the ACM Meetup on AI in VR and IoT he discussed mentoring students and planning for year-round activity to benefit high school students of local regions.

At the 5^th Annual Global Big Data Conference in Santa Clara, Geeta Chauhan, gave a talk on Distributed Deep Learning Optimizations which covered how to run distributed deep learning models at scale. Macy Kuang talked about VR game development and design at the IET Present Around the World Conference. At the Arizona SciTech Conference, Chris Mattheiu, along with Aamir Yunus from Intel, were on The Impact of Emerging Technologies in Arizona panel discussion which covered driverless vehicles and IoT security.

Peter Ma participated in the China-US Young Maker Competition for his 3^rd year in a row. This year his team built a Smart City Air Monitor and they went to the semi-finals. He was joined by fellow Innovators Moheeb Zara, Justin Lassen, America and Penelope Lopez. Peter also participated in the NDC Hackathon Silicon Valley where his team built a mobile app called BudgetWell that uses a slider to find the best match for hotel/airline combo for business travel. The app won the Best Business Travel Prize, App In the Air Sponsor Prize, and the Linksres sponsor prize – pretty much swept all the prizes!

Rose Day created a gist on GitHub on the steps taken to set up Clear Linux* OS for Intel^® Architecture on the Mac. She then set up Microsoft* Azure and has begun to use Python coding to data mine her social media sites to manipulate data, understand what posts people are looking at the most, and how to attract more people to her posts. She is starting with data analytics in Python and planning to add in different means of machine learning to understand more on the data being taken in from different platforms. So far the data is being read from a Facebook page but will soon include Instagram*, LinkedIn*, and YouTube*.

Anthony Chow gave a demo and explained DPDK to attendees of the ACM Sigcomm 2018 conference in Los Angeles. Tim & Alex Porter had a dual-speaking engagement to discuss the benefits of virtual reality therapy for college students to both a live audience and a digital stream to a worldwide audience at the VR and Higher Education Symposium in Boston. They also had a booth where they demoed their Fear of Heights experience and talked about options for behavioral therapy options for college age students.

Europe

Nelson Glauber gave a presentation about how to create layouts in Android using constraint layout at Android Dev Conference. At the Google* Agency Day, Nelson gave a presentation on Kotlin* language for Android development. At both Androidos Day 2017 and Google Launchpage Build Porto Alegre, he gave a workshop and presentation on Kotlin for Android development.

Adam Milton-Barker published two projects: TIA and TASS. He also wrote a tutorial on how to use his open-source TASS computer vision project. Sergey Ivanov taught a summer school course at Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod (UNN) about “Technology + Business 2017” which discussed the basics of IoT, technologies of neuronet, machine learning methods, and the basics of innovative business.

Michael Schloh was the sole instructor and lead judge at the ClueCon Maker Challenge in Chicago. Marco Spaziani Brunella created two projects: Packet Manipulator Processor and Open Packet Processor. Salvino Fidacaro talked about location on Google* Maps of tourist sites and using drones to make 360 videos on the fly as well as VR images at the Google* Local Guides Meetup. Vu Pham posted about his implementation of GridRNN in TensorFlow, with a sample project for character-based language model. 

Johnny Chan published an article on How to Setup a Data Science Workflow with Kaggle Python Docker Image on a Laptop. He also published a series of 15+ articles on High Performance Computing (HPC), Intel^® Nervana Academy AI Cluster (running on the Intel^® Xeon Phi™ processor), and other topics including modern code, optimization, parallel programming, and distributed computing. Johnny also completed the Colfax Training on parallel programming and optimization for Intel^® Architectures.

Justin Shenk shared the abstract for a poster he will present at the Intel^® High Performance Computing conference in Denver in November on Evolutionary Optimization of NP-hard problem instances. He also used deep learning with TensorFlow to train LSTMs to create melodies matching various genres in his latest project. He also posted some technical answers to AI questions on Slack Overflow which were viewed over 4,000 times and up-voted over 10 times across Quora and stack exchange.

China

At the 32^nd China Adolescents Science and Technology Innovation Contest, Angelo Qiao introduced the neuron network in Arduino 101* and provided tech support for the Intel^® Make Tomorrow workshop. Hongbo Xiao spoke at the IoT, AI, Machine Vision Union Seminar, the 2017 World Robot Conference, and the 9^th China Academy of Sciences. Lin Liu spoke about IoT at Shanghai Metro Solution Day.

STUDENT AMBASSADOR SPOTLIGHT

Anand Singh trained students to use Git* for code versioning via GitHub at a WebD Git Sesssion. Carlos Paradis published four projects on Mesh: PERCEIVE, NZEB (Net-Zero Energy Building), Social and Code Networks Motifs, and Solar Forecasting in Hawaii. He also published the collection of tools for text mining cybersecurity concepts that he is calling PERCIEVE on GitHub. Vaibhav Patel explained about his ongoing research work in the DL lab, DA-IICT, discussing problem statements and some previous work examples at the general session of research club.

David Ojika used deep learning techniques to improve identification of important signals from background-dominated data with his Deep Learning for HEP project. David also completed the Intel^® Nervana AI Academy Student Ambassador Summer Challenge, winning a prize of an Amazon* Dot. Chinmay S Yalameni created an augmented reality project with the support of artificial intelligence which he is calling Augmir. Prajjwal Bhargava created a project called Digit Recognition which is a web app that uses convolutional neural networks to recognize handwritten digits drawn by the user.

Daniel Theisges dos Santos participated in the Hackathon Senior 2017 event at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. Christian Gabor used a Raspberry* Pi to prototype an image recognition system for home security. At IndiaHacks 2017 AI, Karandeep Singh Dhillon, made a project to detect driver behavior using deep learning. Ujjwal Upadhyay posted about his self-driving car project.

Soubhik Das posted a project for Virtual Shopping Using VR which gives the user a 3D viewpoint of the product they want to purchase which helps the user to make carefully consider their choice of prior to purchase. Suprabhat Das spoke at the Intel^® Nervana AI Academy Student Workshop at Amity University in Kolkata. Peter Szingerblogged about the Introduction to Probability for Machine Learning. Kaustav Tamuly’sZero-Shot Learning project consists of learning how to recognize new concepts just by having a description of them. 

Want to learn more?

You can read about our innovator updates, get the full Innovator program overview, meet the innovators and learn more about innovator benefits. We also encourage you to learn more about our Black Belt Software Developer program as well as our Student Ambassador program. Also check out Developer Mesh to learn more about the various projects that our community of innovators are working on.

Interested in more information? Contact  Wendy Boswell on Twitter.

The Intel® Nervana™ AI Academy for Students program was created to work collaboratively with students at innovative schools and universities doing great work in the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence space. I had the opportunity to get to know Intel® Student Ambassador Karandeep Singh Dhillon and learn about how he became interested in deep learning and how he wants to make it easy for anyone to understand and apply to real-life situations.

Tell us about your background and what got you started in technology.

Currently, I’m in my final year at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies in Dehradun, India and studying computer science with specialization in business analytics and optimization.

My parents bought me a computer when I was in 6^th grade and by the time I was in 8^th grade would make small Bash programs to help me automate tasks. I loved to create those small programs and I decided that I wanted to learn more and would take Computer Science courses for my undergraduate degree.

I can easily say that I love to code. I used to make tutorials and build ROM’s for Android* phones. I used to be an Android Senior Developer at XDA, a mobile software development community, before I retired from the post. I also participate in competitive coding where we are tasked with solving problems relating to data structures. Recently, I did my first hackathon and ranked 7^th in the AI category for all of India.

What projects are you working on now?

I have always been fascinated by and interested in doing a computer vision project and I have hands-on experience with OpenCV. The first project that really got me started in learning about Deep Learning was my project on Automatic Number Plate Recognition. Our goal, or initial inspiration, for this project was to use it in an autonomous parking system which opens the gate when it detects a valid vehicle.

My most recent project was on Detecting Driver Behavior to see if they are driving safe or not. It is a team project that we are thinking of commercializing, so I can’t share a lot about it but we used a convolutional neural network (CNN) to train our dataset.

Currently I’m working on learning Python libraries for deep learning. Previously I had trained all my models on Caffe and want to expand my knowledge and skills. I going to soon be working on making tutorial videos to explain all about deep learning in a way that anyone can understand it, not just CS geeks! I am also hoping to be able to organize some workshops or online webinars to demonstrate how the Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick works with a Raspberry* Pi.

Tell us about a technology challenge you’ve had to overcome in a project

It has been a challenge for me train data on my MacBook Air with the Intel® Core™ i5 processor and 4GB RAM – It takes ages! I do have access to Intel’s cluster, but due to high latency my connection often gets lost. I would like to make a deep learning library which will be efficient enough to train a large dataset on a CPU and require less computation and resources.

What trends do you see happening in technology in the near future?

I believe that quantum computing will change the world. Quantum PCs can investigate the information to give input significantly more productively than standard PCs. Quantum computers can analyze large quantities of data to provide artificial intelligence machines the feedback required to improve performance.

How are you planning to leverage artificial intelligence or deep learning technologies in your work?

AI is my life. I try to use it wherever I can. For example, I use linear regression models to predict my future scores based on my daily study hours. And I may, or may not, use deep learning to detect the faces of people who come to my door. (Shhh!)

What impact on the world do you see AI having? And do you see yourself as part of it?

My favorite thing about AI is that we can make an expert system which is more accurate than human beings. A great example of this are AI-based cancer detection systems. AI is helping doctors to diagnose diseases more accurately, is helping blind people to see, and is even helping banks get more secure. AI is everything and everywhere. I see myself as a learner in this field who wants to contribute as much as I can and I hope to create things that can be used across multiple industries. I am currently looking for work at a company where I can use deep learning to gain more hands-on training and solve real-world issues.

Want to learn more? Check out our Student Developer Zone, join Intel® Developer Mesh, or learn more about becoming a Student Ambassador

Interested in more information? Contact Niven Singh

Rose Day is an Intel® Software Innovator that has grown up around technology and focused her education since high school in the field. She works with sensors and home automation technology to collect and analyze environmental factors in order to identify and manage triggers that impact a person’s health and well-being. Rose took the time to share with us a bit of her background, the projects she is working on now, and her thoughts on where technology is headed.

Tell us about your background.

I began my education in engineering at a technical high school in Connecticut where I was able to get a generalized understanding and overview of electrical and computer engineering while working alongside some teachers trained not only in teaching but in industry. I continued my education and graduated in May 2017 with a B.S in Computer Engineering at University of Hartford.

Rose's Advisor, Dean, and parents, as she accepts 1st place at the CETA Design Expo

I spent two years researching how home environmental changes can affect migraine sufferers. This, in turn, allowed me to focus my senior capstone project on analyzing room variables in terms of migraines, creating an iOS application that interacted with small sensor nodes and AWS. After graduating, I started my Masters in Data Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where I intend to continue my research in home environmental changes and its effects on the people in the home. 

I am currently working with my advisor, Dr. Hassan Salehi, on writing a journal article on the work done during my B.S degree for analyzing environmental changes in the home in terms of the environment.  I am also continuing my research and working to improve it during my Masters and hope to have the iOS app available for release at a later date. I suffer from migraines, visual migraines, and sinus headaches and I know there are many others out there that do as well. So I’m hoping to eventually help people to deal with them more effectively.

What got you started in technology?

My parents enabled me to get interested in technology at an early age. My earliest memory of tinkering with electronics was when my dad used to hold the circuit boards as I soldered. I don’t know how often he got burnt, but it sparked an interest in learning. As I got further into my schooling, my mom became my biggest cheerleader, pushing me further than I thought possible. She always supports and encourages my research and projects. She, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother have shown me what it takes to be a strong woman.

Rose, and her dad, working with Habitat for Humanity on a company volunteer day.

What projects are you working on now?

I am currently working on my Home Fingerprint project in which to analyze home environmental changes and how they affect people in the home. It is an extension of my research done in my B.S. degree. With all of the sensors and automation we have in houses now, why not begin using these sensors for our own benefit?

The long-term goal of this project is to fully incorporate it into my own tiny home so that I can be constantly monitoring the changes that occur. And yes, I said tiny home! As I continue to work on this project, I am constantly researching how data can be manipulated, cleaned, and presented to the user to provide the best results. Not all data is useful when just given to a user in its previously retrieved format. This has been the most challenging part of the project, but the most interesting by far! I strive to one day have a home that helps me to live healthier through the use of technology.

Tell us about a technology challenge you’ve had to overcome in a project.

I believe one of the most interesting challenges I have had to overcome in technology recently was part of a competition I competed in with friend. In 2016, my two friends and I competed in the CT Skills Challenge. This is a group challenge that assigns a specific topic for the team to engineer a solution in which all areas of engineering can be applied. After assembling a team, we team competed at the University of Hartford in the initial round.

During the initial round of the competition, teams were given a packet of data relating to the elderly community and asked to design a solution related to such community. After reviewing the data, our team came up with the solution of an app called Step. Step is an application targeted at the elderly community to aide in facilitating communication between doctors and patients recovering from injury. The overall app would track a user’s injury, recommended treatments, and routine of the treatments. The data would be transmitted back to the doctor for further analysis of treatment options available and changes that could be made. This concept placed in the top three of the initial round and won us a place in the finals.

The finals for the competition took place at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, CT. Once at the finals, a similar format was followed in which the team was given a data set that applied to clean water and asked to provide a solution. With such a broad topic, our group narrowed down the topic to Latin America, and a solution for clean water. We developed a point-of-use water filtration system. This design was based on the UN standard for water which states that if you have running water in your home, then you are considered to have clean water. This is not true for millions in Latin America who have running water that is unsafe to drink from the tap. With this, a cost-effective, three-stage water filtration system can be implemented with the use of local products and e-waste removal. Overall providing inexpensive drinking water to families through filtration and storage.

Accepting their win at the CT Skills Challenge

After developing our idea, we dedicated an hour to master the elevator pitch and presentation which placed us in the top five of all the teams present. Once in the top five, we presented a five-minute power point presentation on our topic. Due to our team dynamic and presentation skills, we managed to win first place overall in the finals.

All of our effort proved that through hard work, time management, and preparation that anything can be accomplished! This challenge was unlike any I have faced in the past but it showed how a team can leverage each person’s unique skills to reach a unified outcome.

Tell us about your experience as a woman working in technology.

Being a woman in technology is an interesting challenge at times. Graduating in May, I was the only female engineer to graduate from the Computer Engineering department at the University of Hartford. While working on my environmental analysis for migraines project at university, the project itself was a struggle to get through as during my first semester of working on it I was told that I wouldn’t be able to join the capstone project class for it. I was going to be graduating in a year and needed to finish the project in order to do so. Transferring schools and classes/credits can be a bit of a mess since classes aren’t always taught in the same order.

I continued my research while struggling to get into the capstone class and was able to present my project the following year. The project presentations took place at the school with the entire College of Engineering, Technology, and Architect (CETA) department at what is referred to as the CETA Design Expo. It was a poster competition in which every graduating senior in CETA had to participate in. The expo had two rounds (1) everyone was judged and the top ten were picked to continue on, (2) the top ten would then present a three-minute impromptu presentation and the top three winners would be announced.

With all of the struggle to get into this class, I will say, it was worth it. Come the day of the expo, I placed in the top ten. Being an avid public speaker, I presented my project and research in the best way I knew how – through personal stories and experiences. This was what I had worked for. By the end of the competition I was announced as the number one winner overall for CETA. The biggest struggle in the five years of my B.S. paid off. And the best part? It was announced at graduation!

After pushing through this project and showing that women can conquer any challenge, I took a job at iDevices (a Hubbell company) in Avon, CT where I’d been an intern for the past year. Starting my job, I was the first and only woman engineer to be working at the newly acquired company.

Last year’s group photo at iDevices

What trends do you see happening in technology in the near future?

The trend I see having the highest impact on the consumer market in the near future is data analytics and learning being incorporated more into the everyday products for home automation. Looking at the home automation market now, many companies are producing sensors, cameras, etc. that are constantly reading and writing data.

If we begin to leverage this data being seen in the home, it can be used for both consumers and business. Businesses can begin using more of the data collected to analyze what projects users are taking advantage of, how often specific products have issues, and more. It will bring another level of business analytics into the company for home automation.

On the flip side, consumers can delve further into their own analytics by incorporating more statistical analysis of data collected, heat maps of rooms used, analysis of people who frequent the house, etc. This is why I have focused my research on environmental changes in the home and how it can be used for analysis both in general use cases and in health analytics.

There is a fine line that no one talks about regarding data collection and sharing. Personally, I would prefer to collect my own data to analyze it and not have a big company collect if for me. But when looking at a company like Facebook, when creating an account, you are signing an unspoken contract about sharing your data and secondary apps must ask permission to access the data. Seeing this, I feel this is where home automation companies are headed in which you buy a product knowing they have some access to your data.

I feel that data collection is going to happen anyway; it is how businesses operate to further themselves and make decisions to further innovation. With that in mind, I believe it is up to the consumer to decide what to share. Personally, I am uncomfortable with IoT connected cameras in the home, therefore I don’t have one and the data won’t be shared. But there are many others that will have no such issue with them.

How does Intel help you succeed?

I joined the Intel® Software Innovators program back in July, but during my short time here I have immensely enjoyed it. Through Intel I have been able to explore options I didn’t know would be possible and meet with people in different parts of the world that share similar interests. Intel has helped me get more involved in the developer community. Through Intel I hope to continue my research and push further into IoT and the analytics field.

Outside of technology, what types of hobbies do you enjoy?

I really enjoy art and public speaking. Typically, I spend time going to a paint club with my grandmother once a month as well as working on other craft projects we can muster up. We have often quilted together in the past and even took UConn art classes together.

Rose’s Gram at one of their paint nights

When I’m not crafting with Gram, another hobby I enjoy is public speaking, which I got into during my first internship at the IT department of Travelers Insurance. I joined my first Toastmasters club in West Hartford, CT (#3523!) and it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made. Toastmasters has helped me improve my speaking abilities and learn to communicate in a more effective manner.

Rose and the West Hartford Toastmasters Club

You mentioned earlier that you want to live in a tiny home. What are your motivations for that?

My goal is to live in a tiny home that is 400 square feet or less, preferably on wheels for traveling. I am a person who enjoys living in a space equivalent to one room and the idea that I can control my whole environment easily with that is a huge plus! My goal is to live a healthier lifestyle but technology can push that even further.

Knowing I suffer from migraines and asthma, it is best for me to live in an environment that is not too dry or humid, and in which the temperature doesn’t vary. Therefore, one thing I would like to implement is a way to analyze patterns in temperature and humidity to be able to adjust this to my liking. Another aspect I would like to incorporate is reading data for air quality, chemicals, and dust in order to implement an air filtering system to aid in cleaning the air. Having asthma means that dust and chemicals are not always your best friend.

I would eventually like to live off grid, if possible. With that in mind I have considered adding in technologies such as solar and wind to produce energy and track how much is produced during a day versus how much is used. And lastly, a way to track water usage in the home and be able to shut water down remotely in case of leaks.

How can people connect further with you and follow your projects:

I am fairly active across several social media platforms including: Intel’s® Developer Mesh, LinkedIn, GitHub, Instagram, and Facebook. I would love to connect with other developers in my area, female developers, and of course people working on similar projects.

Want to learn more about the Intel® Software Innovator Program?

You can read about our innovator updates, get the full program overview, meet the innovators and learn more about innovator benefits. We also encourage you to check out Developer Mesh to learn more about the various projects that our community of innovators are working on.

Interested in more information? Contact  Wendy Boswell. 

Our new comic strip introduces a software developer's home life with her friendly robot. In this snapshot of the future, we imagine what life might be like when artificial intelligence enables us all to have robots at home. As they become smarter and develop more life-like behaviors, we might start to think of them more as flat mates, than machines. If you're developing artificial intelligence applications, take a look at the resources in the Intel® NervanaTM AI Academy.

Next comic strip: Robot and Me: A night out

Our second cartoon strip in the Robot and Me series sees software developer Sarah going outside with her robot buddy. It invites us to think about whether machines could ever appreciate or understand beauty. What would that mean? How would that change our relationship with technology?

If you'd like to develop applications using artificial intelligence, take a look at the resources available in the Intel® NervanaTM AI Academy. It has a range of tools and training to help you make AI software today.

Next comic strip: Robot and Me: Baking a cake

Perhaps the most visible application of artificial intelligence today is the recommendation engine that suggests other products you might like when shopping online. It's not always perfect, so Sarah's attempt to bake a cake with her robot buddy in our latest strip might feel familiar to you. If you're engineering today's artificial intelligence solutions, or you're looking to the future, Intel has resources to help you.Visit the Intel® NervanaTM AI Academy.

First comic strip: Robot and Me: A night in

MeshCommander is a web-based Intel® AMT management console that you can downloads, install and use to connect to and manage your Intel® AMT computers. MeshCommander is closing in on being two years old. Development in ongoing every week, more improvements & bug fixes keep being published on the web site.

This week is notable for a release of v0.5.3 and new features around MeshCommander’s handling of certificates and TLS connections.

• Improved certificate manager. MeshCommander comes with its own built-in certificate management tool. Certificates are an important part of working with Intel AMT, and this new version includes the ability to create certificates for different usages.
• Mutual-Authentication Support. MeshCommander now fully supports setting up Intel AMT for mutual-authentication TLS connections and connecting in this mode with console authentication. In addition to normal connections: remote desktop, terminal and IDE-R all support mutual-auth TLS. Check out the YouTube video demonstration on how to get this quickly setup.
• IDE Redirect over TLS. Also new in this version is, finally, support for IDE-R over TLS. This may seem like a trivial feature, but it’s much more complicated because MeshCommander takes over all network read/write from IMRSDK.dll using its own TLS connection for all network traffic. This makes IDE-R TLS using MeshCommander a lot more flexible than it otherwise would be.

There are many more improvements and bug fixes, but want to keep it short… if you use Intel® AMT, check of the latest version and other tools at http://meshcommander.com. This latest version of MeshCommander is also built-into MeshCentral2.

Enjoy!
Ylian

Check out the new YouTube demonstration on how to setup Intel® AMT with
TLS and Mutual-Authentication TLS using MeshCommander.

Intel has a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion. We believe that in order to shape the future of technology, we must be representative of that future. This is what started Intel’s exploration into sponsoring FIDGETECH’s initial game jam and our ongoing relationship with them, as well as other non-profits that actively work with STEM education for diverse populations. Autism affects a large number of people and their unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences can help us to continue to innovate and solve the world’s toughest challenges.

FIDGETECH is a non-profit organization in the Portland-metro area that creates technology-focused programs for autistic people age 17 and up. Intel® Software worked with FIDGETECH this past spring to sponsor a Game Jam where young autistic adults received an introduction to game design from professional game developers. Below, Director Justin Haigh explains how the organization got started and where they are headed. 

What is FIDGETECH

FIDGETECH is the result of several years of collaboration between a small group of individuals based in Portland, Oregon interested in the personal and professional success of adults with autism. Dr. Justine Haigh, FIDGETECH’s director, is mother to Dan (now 19) who was diagnosed with autism at an early age. Justine noticed her son loved focusing on technology, even at a very young age, and realized that other young adults on the autism spectrum share a similar passion. Committed to helping her son, and others, find their purpose through technology, Justine teamed up with David Karstens, Jeanna Johnson, and other volunteers to create a variety of technology-focused programs for young autistic adults, ages 17 or older.

We started as a night program at Park Academy in Lake Oswego, Oregon called the “Explorer” program. FIDGETECH Explorer has been running for two years with over 25 participating members. In a fun and supportive environment, members are encouraged to explore various areas of technology to expand their technical abilities and knowledge. Through team projects, individual projects, group instruction, and self-study, members develop skills and apply their knowledge using technologies such as Blender, Photoshop, Java, HTML/CSS, SketchUp, C++/C#, Unreal, GameMaker, Unity, SparkFun, and others.

FIDGETECH was just recently notified that we are now officially a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We are very excited about this and are looking forward to start fund-raising efforts soon.

FIDGETECH’s Future Plans

While working to open additional FIDGETECH Explorer chapters, with an initial focus on Yamhill County, Oregon, FIDGETECH held a Game Jam over spring break in March 2017 in the newly launched Chehalem Valley Innovation Accelerator. The Game Jam was joint sponsored through the Intel® Software Innovator program, Intel® Game Dev program, and Soma Games, whose CEO is Intel® Black Belt Software Developer and Intel® Software Innovator Chris Skaggs, as part of the overall Diversity and Inclusion Month efforts in March. The event provided twelve young adults on the autism spectrum an introduction to game design using Unity 3D and Gaia. Technical instruction was provided by FIDGETECH instructors and professional game developers from Newberg-based Soma Games. FIDGETECH has also launched an evening innovation camp at the accelerator, which will meet weekly September through December this fall.

While expanding the Explorer program, FIDGETECH is partnering with Epicodus Portland to launch a trade certificate program in web and mobile software application development. This program is specifically designed for individuals on the autism spectrum. Epicodus is an in-person code school that provides training in languages such as C#, PHP, Javascript, .NET, Ruby on Rails, React, and more. FIDGETECH members participating in the Epicodus training program receive the additional support of small groups, a 4-to-1 member-to-instructor ratio, instructors certified as Synergy Autism mentors, one-on-one tutoring, and specialized internship training developed by Incite Works. To promote this opportunity and help individuals determine if they have an interest in programming, FIDGETECH and Epicodus hold frequent introduction to programming workshops at the Epicodus Portland facility. Check the FIDGETECH website and Facebook page for the next scheduled workshop. 

Readying Autistic Young Adults for Employment

National and state-wide diversity awareness for the employment of autistic individuals is still in its early stages. During initial discussions of program designs, FIDGETECH’s founders were encouraged with the success local young adults on the autism spectrum were finding internships at Portland-based businesses, including Cambia Health and New Relic. In both cases, these opportunities were the result of a collaboration between like-minded corporate representatives and advocates for adults with autism.

That set the hook for FIDETECH’s founders, and the launch of the organization’s core programs. New Relic has held two Future Talks at its headquarters in Portland focused on autism in the workforce. Prosper Portland has invited FIDGETECH and New Relic to speak to their TechTown Diversity Pledge Companies to highlight the importance and benefits of hiring individuals on the autism spectrum.

For more information on companies who are hiring individuals on the autism spectrum, see the following Forbes article: Where is Autism Employment Heading in 2017?

What Makes FIDGETECH Unique

There are many organizations working with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) individuals in various ways, but FIDGETECH is unique in its design. FIDGETECH’s Explorer, Education, Portfolio Builder, and Maker programs are organized to work with individuals as they face obstacles and boundaries in various stages of personal and professional development. For example, the Explorer program can help individuals find a community of peers and develop an interest in technology. The Education program can be helpful for individuals interested in developing skills needed to succeed in a technological field.

Although only the Explorer and Education programs are currently operating, FIDGETECH’s vision is to provide long-term support and community to its members by developing all its programs. The Portfolio Builder program is outlined to help individuals with specific skills apply those skills to real-world problems, while the Maker program is outlined for those interested in pursuing the development of a product or project.

Learn More About FIDGETECH

Please visit our website to learn more about FIDGETECH programs, our staff & directors, and about autism in the United States. Follow us on Facebook to learn about upcoming events and other information.

For more information about FIDGETECH programs, please visit us at:
Website: http://fidgetech.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fidgetech

Please direct any questions or inquiries to Justine Haigh: Justine.haigh@fidgetech.org or by phone: (503) 724-3619.

FIDGETECH is a vendor with Vocational Rehabilitation. Please see local Vocational Rehabilitation consultants for details.

Volunteer Opportunities

FIDGETECH is always looking to recruit technical volunteers. If you are an Intel employee and would like to get involved with this organization, contact Justine Haigh or Wendy Boswell. FIDGETECH is now part of Intel® Involved, the global corporate volunteer program at Intel. 

Art’Em is an application that hopes to bring artistic style transfer to virtual reality. It aims to increment the stylization speed by using low precision networks.  

Neural networks are all about matrix multiplication and dot products. The key to this project working out is the forward and back propagation. In the Art’Em - Week 2 article, we saw how the forward propagation involves numerous large matrix multiplications. We also delved into the proof of concept for matrix multiplication. Let’s delve into how all this looks in some basic code.

Getting Our Hands Dirty

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
// printBits prints the binary format of the unsigned int passed to it.
void printBits(size_t const size, void const * const ptr){
    unsigned char *b = (unsigned char*) ptr;
    unsigned char byte;
    int i, j;
    for (i=size-1;i>=0;i--)
        for (j=7;j>=0;j--)
        {
            byte = (b[i] >> j) & 1;
            printf("%u", byte);
        }
    puts("");    printf("\n");				}
int main() {
    // Declare and initialize arrays
    float arra [32], arrb[32];
    for(int i = 0; i < 32; i++){
        double x = (double) rand()/RAND_MAX;
        arra[i] = ((x>0.3)?1:-1); arrb[i] = ((x>0.5)?-1:1);
    }
    // Converting A and B to unsigned ints
    unsigned int returnera = 0, returnerb = 0, sign;
    for(int i = 0; i<32; i++){
        sign = (arra[i] >= 0);		// << is a left bitshift operator, if sign is 001
        returnera = returnera | (sign<<i);	// and i is 2, sign<<i will give: 100.
        sign = (arrb[i] >= 0);		// returnera is initialized as 0, and the sign
        returnerb = returnerb | (sign<<i);	// bitshift allows it to turn the arra matrix
    }						// to an unsigned int. (Of length 32).
    printBits(sizeof(returnera), &returnera);    printBits(sizeof(returnerb), &returnerb);
    // Dot product of matrices
    unsigned int tempj = ~(returnera^returnerb); // Very important part. XNOR operation.
    printBits(sizeof(tempj), &tempj);
    int jj = 2*(__builtin_popcount(tempj)) - 32; // population count implemented as pcnt
    int sum = 0;				     // given in this image.
    for(int i = 0; i<32; i++)		sum += arra[i]*arrb[i];
    printf("\nVerified sum: XNOR: %d and Normal: %d", jj, sum);
}

The above code should give the following result:

00101011111010111111111110011110
11011100101111100010010101100011
00001000101010100010010100000010
Verified sum: XNOR: -14 and Normal: -14

You can see above, how arra and arrb have been converted to unsigned ints and how their XNOR operation is followed by a pcnt operation.

The same can be extended for higher dimensional matrices.

The past two weeks have been largely about benchmarking general matrix multiply operations to delve into the applications of this awesome technique. 

Benchmarking

I believe that if properly trained, neural networks designed to run on XNOR-net architecture can perform almost as well as full precision networks. But the true efficacy of using this architecture for general purpose deep learning remains a mystery, till more research is done.

Before implementing XNOR for dot product and general matrix multiplication, I decided to do a small rudimentary case study on how I can use Intel^® Xeon Phi™ cluster as well as GPUs for bringing my project: Art’Em to life. This is especially important as I hope to achieve really good results with the Intel^® Xeon Phi™ cluster for the XNOR-net.

The case study below tests multiplication of full precision matrices, where each matrix is of the size 2ⁿ. The choice of 2ⁿ is primarily because CUDA parallelization works much better when the matrix dimensions are multiples of the block size. The method of matrix multiplication using CUDA was with shared memory. When I modified the code to support matrices of all sizes, there was a significant slowdown in the matrix multiplication.

One of the problems in this case study was the inability of my GPU to run matrix multiply operations of size greater than 8192. With a more powerful GPU, much larger matrices can be multiplied. However I have restricted myself to 8192.

I ran the same matrix multiplication algorithm on the Intel^® Xeon Phi™ cluster. I used the MKL and OpenMP for this purpose. I have also benchmarked rudimentary CUDA XNOR GEMM code for fixed matrix sizes. You can find the specifications of the Intel^® Xeon Phi™ cluster used as well as the GPU at the bottom of this article.

The X-axis is the size of both the square matrices, and Y-axis is the amount of time it takes for the multiplication in seconds.

GPU

I used 3 kernels, one is the cuBLAS kernel, the other is a CUDA GEMM kernel and the third is the XNOR GEMM. It is extremely important to note that the Y-axis is logarithmic.

On the GPU, the home made XNOR GEMM kernel significantly outperforms even the highly optimized cuBLAS function. This shows great promise for the XNOR-net strategy.

However, once we modify the code to support custom size matrix multiplication, we observe some slowdown in performance of the GEMM function. This is due to the extra redundant multiplications.

This should not be a problem once we design neural networks specifically for the XNOR architecture. We can still expect a significant increase in throughput with this strategy provided the networks are trained to work with this architecture.

CPU

I used 2 kernels, one being the optimized ‘cblas_sgemm’ function from Intel^® Math Kernel Library (Intel^® MKL) and the other was a classical matrix multiply function. A great in-depth analysis of classical matrix multiply functions and their efficiency can be found here. It is extremely important to note that the Y-axis is logarithmic.

While the XNOR GEMM code is not yet ready for general matrix multiplication, I benchmarked multiplication of full precision nets. The highly optimized CBLAS MKL outperforms the homemade classical matrix multiplication code significantly. This is not surprising at all.

However, I hope to get significant speed up once I begin to pack the matrix into unsigned integers and running a bitwise operator instead of multiplication of the matrices.

The next phase of this project will aim at creating highly optimized CUDA and MKL supported CPU and GPU compatible codes to work with XNOR general matrix multiplication of matrices of any size. I also hope to delve into optimizing convolution operations with XNOR net architecture.

While it is wiser to focus on creating networks with matrix sizes of the order 2ⁿ , it is also very important to bring XNOR-nets to existing architectures, like the VGG 16, Alex net etc.

CPU used:

Processor name: Intel^® Xeon Phi™ processor 7210
Cores: 64
Processors (CPUs): 256
Cores per package: 64
Threads per core: 4
On-Package Memory: 16 GB high bandwidth MCDRAM (bandwidth ~400 GB/s)
DDR4 Memory: 96 GB 6 Channel (Bandwidth ~ 80 GB/s)
ISA: Intel^® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512), (Vector length 512-bit)

GPU used:

Manufacturer: NVIDIA
GPU name: NVIDIA* GeForce 840M
Core Speed:1029 MHz
Memory Speed: 2000 MHz
Max. Amount of Memory: 4096 MB

Read the Week 2 Update

In my keynote address at JavaOne 2017 on Oct 2nd, I talked about building the future of data with Java. The growth in daily data generation continues, but the Internet of Things (IoT) soon will outpace the connections and data generated by people. 
Smart, connected devices and sensors are joining the Internet at a rapid pace, and they will generate tremendous amounts of data. By itself, data is not so interesting; the critical idea is to rapidly extract insight and intelligence from data. 
The speed of insight has become a new competitive advantage for companies—it boosts their business, helping to reduce costs, better understand customers, create new innovations, launch new initiatives, and respond more quickly in today’s digital economy.  Business is fundamentally changing.

Intel® technology and Java, building the future together

We view Java as a foundational technology for unleashing the potential of data. We believe the performance and intelligence of Intel technology and Java can make a better future possible. 

Performance is everything in a world where the difference between minutes and months can mean the success or failure of a business—or in extreme cases like medical treatment, it can mean saving lives.    

At Intel, we’re working to build solutions that are up to the challenge. Our newest hardware, the Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor family, is designed to turn data into decisions, faster than ever. And it gets even better when you add the Java Development Kit, version 9 (JDK9).  

I have shared before that a decade of accelerating Java had led to 73X performance boost; now with our latest processors and JDK9, that number has jumped to 110X. For more information, read our white paper Intel Accelerates HW and SW Performance for Server Side Java Applications.

In addition, Intel® Optane™ technology will open up new opportunities for programmers. Intel Optane technology is a once in a generation transformation in memory media. With Intel Optane technology, random accessibility and nonvolatile durability come together, allowing for incredible speed at terabyte scale. These innovations provide unique opportunities for software developers to reimagine their architectures for products such as not-only-structured query language (NoSQL) data stores and data grids. 

Persistent memory programming can be tricky, requiring access to low-level CPU instructions that can make it cumbersome for Java applications. We want to make this easier for Java developers, so we now offer a new library called Persistent Collections for Java. It provides Java developers an optimized and easy-to-use set of data structures. Check out our open source developer site at https://github.com/pmem/pcj for more information.   

We are equally excited about the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) as the next big wave of computing innovation. AI will change the way businesses operate and how people engage with the world. AI will harness and convert the flood of data into powerful insights and smarter decisions. Increasingly, these insights will be made by machines, as powerful algorithms and machine-to-machine communications become the norm.   

We’re helping businesses of every kind stay in front of this revolution and accelerate solutions, automate operations, gather better insights, and ultimately, make smarter decisions. We’re enabling technologies such as vectorization, which we’ve enhanced in our Intel Xeon Scalable processors by adding Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX 512). This hardware feature enables a big boost in performance and throughput for the most demanding computational tasks, such as modeling and simulation, data analytics and machine learning, data compression, visualization, and digital content creation. 

The possibilities for Java are incredible, and they will keep Java vibrant and strong. With JDK9 more open than ever, developers can more easily take advantage of Intel’s Java leadership and investments. 

It’s clear that for Java to be a leading development and run-time environment in AI, making it easy to add vectorization is incredibly important, so in partnership with Oracle, Intel has created a Vector API within Project Panama. AI, financial services, and scientific computing applications will benefit first, with other usages to follow. We’re already generating results with the API that show the promise of vectorization. 

To make this a reality, and as accessible and applicable to as many developers as possible, we created the Vector API Developer Program—click the link to learn more about it. 

Making use of the data is the big opportunity, and I invite you to participate by joining the Java community, supporting OpenJDK and breakthrough projects, and helping us create the future of data with Java and Intel technology.

*©Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Other names may be claimed as the property of others

Today, at IoT Solution World Congress in Barcelona, Intel launched the Intel® Secure Device Onboard (Intel® SDO) service. Intel SDO vastly accelerates trusted onboarding of IoT devices—from minutes to seconds—with a zero-touch, automated process. That process begins when the device is first powered on, and it ends when the customer’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform takes control. In this post, I will focus on the revolutionary security technology that Intel delivers to make the entire onboarding process for devices hardware-protected, private, and scalable.

Shipping default credentials, error-prone human authentication of headless devices, and potentially vulnerable software updates represent fundamental risks to IoT that grow the surface area available for attacks like the Mirai Botnet. That is why the IoT industry needs to automate security and leverage the protections that hardware can deliver. Given the sheer volume of IoT devices (Gartner predicts there will be 20 billion by 2020), security automation is essential to turning the tide. The Intel SDO service delivers automated IoT security that protects each device during its entire security lifecycle: from protected boot and authentication at power on, to secure registration with the IoT platform, to an instant update of the device’s image.

At its heart, Intel SDO leverages Intel® Enhanced Privacy ID (Intel® EPID), released in 2008, as a means to cryptographically authenticate Intel® platforms remotely—without putting Intel in the direct authentication path.

Intel ratified this approach as an open standard with the Trusted Computing Group/International Standards Organization (TCG/ISO), and we have shipped 2.7 billion Intel EPID keys inside Intel® processors’ trusted execution environments. The unique, privacy-preserving model enables a critical use case: to provide private, anonymous onboarding of devices, and to help to establish a secure, encrypted communication channel between the device and its control platform.

Intel has worked closely with more than 30 ecosystem partners to begin enabling their solutions for the Intel SDO zero-touch/zero-worry onboarding model. 

Using our toolkits (available at no cost) and our cross-platform onboarding service, ecosystem partners can enable any device to onboard to any IoT platform in a single session, as opposed to a one-off configuration for each platform method.

Customers want maximum flexibility, and they will gravitate to open models, such as Intel SDO and Intel EPID, that span ecosystems and platforms. In fact, Intel has worked with ARM microcontroller (MCU) providers like Microchip, Infineon, and Cypress to ensure  IOT devices have an Intel EPID credential to seed this zero-touch capability.

According to John Weil, Vice President of the MCU Business Unit at Cypress, “The PSoC 6 MCU architecture is purpose-built for the Internet of Things, with security, ultra-low power, performance, and flexibility as its key pillars. An onboarding solution that combines the strengths of PSoC 6 and Intel’s EPID technology and Intel SDO services will enable customers to deploy their IoT systems safely and quickly.”

On the IoT platform side, providers gain a broader array of devices that can be onboarded in mass quantities by non-security technicians who just need to power on the device.

“We’re happy to see the work Intel is doing with the Intel Secure Device Onboard service and EPID, which helps improve security in the industry,” said Sam George, Partner Director, Azure Internet of Things. “We recently announced the Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Services for secure and fast cloud-scale device provisioning and are partnering with Intel to enable the Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Services and the Intel Secure Device Onboard Service to work together seamlessly for SDO-enabled devices.”

IoT device distribution and supply chains also benefit from the seeding of Intel EPID in the device. Today, as devices change ownership, the bill of lading and other paper-based tracking methods are slow and disconnected from the device activation process. Intel SDO delivers a set of digital signing tools for the distribution chain that work with Intel EPID to prove device ownership to the IOT platform dynamically, in real time.  This process will facilitate the integration to a number of services, including device provenance into blockchains.

Consider what happens when onboarding devices involved with time sensitive transactions or price sensitive commodities. For example, oil could be transacted and metered in a connected supply chain where all parties have a vested interest to record volume, place, and price data. Intel SDO-enabled meters and devices could onboard to an industry-neutral exchange ledger to record the transaction and relay onboarded device data to customer-operated platforms.

This is one reason why we plan to evolve Intel SDO onboarding capabilities to leverage our recent investments in blockchain technology. With that alternative trust model, an SDO-enabled device could query the blockchain to find the device owner, and ownership could be programmatically reassigned to an authorized use.

The possibilities are exciting. Intel SDO has arrived at an opportune moment for the IoT industry, which has been awash with headlines of hacks and threatened government regulations. With Intel SDO, deploying billions of devices securely just go simpler.

I invite you to read my colleague Jennifer Gilburg’s blog post on our solution, and read more about how Intel SDO will dramatically change the IoT landscape. 

Imagine you’re going to install 10,000 smart light bulbs in a factory. How much time should you schedule?  Before they can start streaming data, you need to key in each device identity, coordinate network credentials with IT, and register each device with the operational technology (OT) smart building control platform.

If you guessed 20 minutes per bulb, you’re about right. For 10,000 bulbs, you’d need almost two years! Analysts predict tens of billions of connected devices by 2020, but the burden of onboarding devices is huge, and it could keep the Internet of Things (IoT) industry from achieving the penetration and scale we all hope to see.

On Oct. 3, Intel announced a zero-touch device-onboarding service, Intel® Secure Device Onboard (Intel® SDO). It will scale IoT deployments to put more devices into service faster. Intel SDO enables owners to simply power on devices, then the service dynamically sets up the initial connectivity, authenticates the device, and registers it with the IoT platform’s methods—all automatically—in seconds. The service delivers privacy protection and a secure device baseline, ready for update.

Automated, secure, in seconds.

Surmounting a Major Barrier to IoT Provisioning and Security

As IoT use cases move from proof of concept to deployment, OT teams are making increasing requests to provision devices onto corporate networks. IT security experts want to first ensure devices are properly authenticated, but this can interfere with the deployment schedule as the OT team strives to achieve production scale.

Manual activation is often problematic, with numerous “headless” IoT devices that require re-keying and authentication to get onto the network. Security issues can be introduced via misconfiguration, shipping of default credentials, or use of software-only security mechanisms. That is why Intel created a scalable, zero-touch, automated solution for security, to provision not only Intel® devices, but those of other microcontroller unit (MCU) providers, as well. 

Scaling Identity for All Devices 

At its heart, Intel SDO is based on Intel® Enhanced Privacy ID (Intel® EPID) to deliver a means of anonymously authenticating devices to remote IoT platforms. Intel EPID is a Trusted Computing Group/Intenational Standards Organization (TCG/ISO) open standard that is distributed within Intel® processors as well as by MCU providers such as Microchip, Cypress, Andes Technology, NationZ, and Infineon. It’s fast becoming a best practice identity model for IoT, with over 2.7 billion keys distributed since 2008. Read a VDC Research IoT identity comparison paper for more information.

Scaling Device Enablement

In a typical scenario, a device manufacturer will build and sell a large quantity of devices through multiple distribution channels. That means the manufacturer cannot know where a device will be deployed, which cloud it will connect to, or how the device will be used. That causes one-off staging and expensive pre-loading for device manufacturers to support customer orders. But the alternative of shipping a standard image has the downside of increasing the manual provisioning configuration for installers in the field.

Scaling IoT Platform Choices and Unlocking Flexibility

Real World Customer Proving Grounds for Scalable Onboarding

Onboarding Tens of Billions of IoT Devices Just Got Simpler

• Visit  www.intel.com/securedeviceonboard to learn more about Intel SDO
• Find free ecosystem enabling tools here: https://software.intel.com/sdo
• Join the Intel SDO program as a partner.  Email iotonboarding@intel.com

Today, MeshCentral2 has an even easier and faster way to get setup with a new Microsoft Windows MSI installer. Now, you can download and install MeshCentral2 in a few minutes even if you know nothing about NodeJS, NPM or installing a server. Just download the MSI installer, launch it and answer a few questions. MeshCentral2 will run in the background and turns into your own personal web based remote management solution. It’s never been easier. Because MeshCentral2 supports LAN mode, you don’t even need a fixed IP address or DNS name to run your own server and manage computers on your local network. Here are the highlights this week:

• New Windows MSI installer, makes MeshCentral2 super easy to install. Once installed, you have the option to keep the server always updated to the latest version. To show this off, we have a new YouTube demonstration video. Goes into details of how the installer works and each of the configuration options. Thanks to Ariel Silverman for his help and expect knowledge on installers that made this possible.
• Improved MeshAgent2 with child process support. MeshAgent2 runs JavaScript code sent to it by the server. Starting with this version, Bryan Roe added a new system where you can launch a child process that runs JavaScript and have the child and parent communicate using named pipes. This new system is very easy to develop against and causes the parent to be isolated from the child in the event of a crash. This feature will be used in the future to get platform telemetry.
• Improved MeshAgent2 stability. Lots of work has been done this week to improve the stability of the MeshAgent. Bryan Roe addressed a bunch of critical memory corruption bugs that make this version of the MeshAgent2 the most stable it’s ever been.
• Set device locations on the map. Thanks to Ganesh Raikhelkar, you can now right click on the MeshCentral2 map view and set one or more device positions manually. This improves that map view considerably by allowing users to set the positions to known devices.

Lots more bug fixes have been included. MeshCentral2 is still marked at “Beta 1”, however, we are nearing a more stable release and expect to move to “Beta 2” shortly. MeshCentral2 should not be used in production environments.

Enjoy!
Ylian
http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcentral2

MSI installer demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtROYareYRI

Come see 18 cores on October 18th

During the week of October 18th, more than ten thousand of the world’s best video editors, moviemakers, photographers, digital artists, and creative gurus will descend on Las Vegas for Adobe Max, Adobe’s annual customer and product pow-wow. Intel has been working with Adobe for over a decade to make sure their industry-leading creative suite uses the latest Intel processor and graphics features. For example, Adobe* Premiere* Pro can now scale to more than 25 processor cores, helping to dramatically cut 4K video rendering times—for creative pros, time is of the essence.

At Adobe Max, Intel will showcase the latest super-fast PC technologies that will help creators focus on fresh ideas rather than waiting for render bars on their screens. The monster 18-core Intel® Core™ i9 Extreme Edition processor will be shown chewing through intensive Premiere Pro*, Felix* and “megatasking” workloads publicly for the first time. Creators are more and more mobile these days as well, and high-end mobile uses such as field photography and editing will be shown on the latest Intel® Xeon™ mobile processor-based systems. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom* team has been working with Intel engineers to optimize for the latest Intel processors.

New films use virtual reality powered by Intel technologies to immerse movie fans -- See it at the Intel booth at Adobe Max

Intel is working with leading filmmakers to pull movie fans into the virtual reality action. It’s just the beginning of the latest trend to hit Hollywood and content creators around the world: Leading filmmakers creating Virtual Reality Experiences (VREs) in 360-degree video, 3D-game-like environments, immersive sound, head mounted displays, motion chairs and even scent emitters to pull movie fans into the action. “Technology is going to change the future of filmmaking, as virtual reality has changed the equation. The future of cinematic VR will be totally immersive,” said Ravi Velhal, who collaborated on these VR projects on Intel’s behalf.  “Multiple sensory experiences will keep on improving in quality, while the line between the real and virtual worlds will continue to blur.”  Capitalizing on successful films like Dunkirk* and Spider-Man: Homecoming*, VREs bring stories to life for movie fans long after they’ve left the theater. VR is even poised to become the newest film medium with the release of Le Musk, the first VR multi-sensory feature film by AR Rahman. Find out more about how Intel is driving cinematic virtual reality with leading content creators in Hollywood and globally here.

Earlier this summer, Intel collaborated with Warner Bros.* and Practical Magic* to create a gripping VR experience based on this summer’s hit movie Dunkirk. “In just a few taut moments, the Dunkirk VR Experience provides a thrilling glimpse of the three main settings in our film in a uniquely subjective way,” said Christopher Nolan, who wrote, directed and produced the film. While 360-degree VR videos are optimized for HD and 4K media, the production company had to stitch images 40 times that resolution for this VR experience. Using Dell* blade servers and workstations that were powered by Intel® Xeon™ processors, Practical Magic had real-time access to high-resolution media during the post-production process. Come check it out at Intel’s booth at Adobe Max!

Intel is also teaming up with B&H Photo at Adobe Max to showcase Intel-based Systems geared to the Creative Pro in their booth AND offer some great online deals on PCs and peripherals for content creators, regardless of whether or not they are at the show.

Intel and Adobe look forward to continuing a strong partnership that ultimately benefits content creators. Visit Intel’s booth (#375) at Adobe Max October 18–20, 2017 in Las Vegas, and say hello!

For more information on Intel developer resources and programs for VR content creators, visit the Intel Developer Zone/VR.

#  #  #

* Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.  Other names may be claimed as the property of others. © Intel Corporation, 2017

Intel Parallel Studio XE 2018 is the latest version of Intel’s comprehensive tool suite for modernizing software on Intel® architectures. In honor of its release, we’ve included several articles on Intel Parallel Studio XE components in this issue. Modernize Your Code for Performance, Portability, and Scalability gives a high-level overview of the many new features and capabilities in this tool suite. (You can also learn more in my blog on the release of Intel Parallel Studio XE 2018.) Dealing with Outliers shows how to detect fraud in a real-world dataset of credit card transactions, using the Intel® Data Analytics Acceleration Library to achieve high accuracy at very high performance.

Intel Parallel Studio XE has always supported OpenMP*. The latest release supports OpenMP 4.5 and many features of the 5.0 draft specification. We close out our celebration of OpenMP’s 20th birthday with a final guest editorial, this one from Barbara Chapman, Professor at Stony Brook University and Director of Computer Science and Mathematics at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In Welcome to the Adult World, OpenMP, Barbara discusses the early success of OpenMP and why it’s likely to remain a vital parallel programming model for years to come.

The Intel® HPC Developer Conference (November 11-12 in Denver, CO) and SC17 (November 12-17, also in Denver) are just around the corner, so this issue contains three articles devoted to HPC. We explore Intel® Cluster Checker in Is Your Cluster Healthy? This component of Intel Parallel Studio encapsulates many best-known methods and system diagnostics to keep clusters operating efficiently. Several BIOS options can affect application performance, but it’s difficult to change these options on demand in a production cluster environment. Learn about a technique to enable on-demand BIOS configuration changes in Optimizing HPC Clusters. And Effectively Using Your Whole Cluster presents a case study of HPC application tuning using several of the tools in Intel Parallel Studio XE.

The Heterogeneous Parallel Computing Future

The future is heterogeneous. (Actually, CPUs and GPUs have existed within the same system—and even on the same processor die—for many years now, so heterogeneous computing is already here.) Just as multicore processors have made parallelism ubiquitous, it won’t be long before CPU, GPU, FPGA, ASIC, etc. coexisting within the same system makes heterogeneous parallelism ubiquitous, too. I used to worry about the heterogeneous future, but new parallel programming models will make it easier to map computations to the most efficient processor architecture. The Intel® Threading Building Blocks Flow Graph API is one such approach.

This API has already been covered in The Parallel Universe (see “Heterogeneous Programming with Intel® Threading Building Blocks” in our special issue), so I won’t discuss it here, but this issue’s feature article, Driving Performance with Intel® Advisor’s Flow Graph Analyzer, gives an in-depth look at the Flow Graph Analyzer technology preview feature in Intel Parallel Studio XE. We use an autonomous driving application to illustrate the flow graph computation and analysis.

The Parallel Universe welcomes back its founding editor, James Reinders, to continue the theme of heterogeneity. In Enabling FPGAs for Software Developers, James and Bernhard Friebe discuss FPGA programming from a software, rather than a hardware, development perspective. Look for a follow-up article on FPGA programming in our next issue.

Finally, we close out this issue with a detailed look at what’s new in the AVX-512 instruction set architecture. Tuning for Success with the Latest SIMD* Extensions and Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 discusses best practices in performance tuning with the new SIMD language extensions for AVX-512 and the latest support in the Intel compilers for the Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors.

Coming Attractions

We’re working on a wide range of topics for future issues of The Parallel Universe, including FPGA programming, Java* performance tuning, new Intel Parallel Studio features, and much more. Be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss a thing.

Henry A. Gabb

October 2017

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1. FastBFT research paper published in June
2. Intel’s Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) open source release in July
3. Microsoft’s Coco Framework announcement in August. 

June: FastBFT Research – NEC Laboratories Europe and Aalto University

July: Proof of Elapsed Time – Intel and Hyperledger Sawtooth

August: Coco Framework Announcement – Microsoft

Conclusion

With a life-long interest in 3D technology Silviu-Tudor Serban has been creating interactive environments since childhood. After being named a winner in the Intel® RealSense™ App Challenge and being invited to become an Intel® Software Innovator, Silviu has expanded his skillset and is currently working on an AI-driven robot for the office.

Tell us about your background.

My background is in applied computer vision and machine learning research, developing solutions in areas such as: surveillance and activity recognition, intelligent traffic analysis, automatic document classification, smart camera and radar tracking, vision-based defect detection for the automotive industry, and real-time object reconstruction with 3D cameras.

Three years ago, my friend Andrei Nistor and I began work on a project focused on pushing the boundaries of human-computer interaction called Drill Sergeant Simulator. We designed a gamified 3D immersive experience where the user steps into a computer generated military training boot-camp and takes the role of the drill sergeant. We integrated Intel RealSense technology in our solution and built an AI with the ability of understanding and reacting to the user’s hand gestures, facial expression and voice commands.

Drill Sergeant Simulator was selected as one of the Intel® RealSense™ App Challenge winners and soon after we had the great honor to become members of the Intel® Software Innovators program.

What got you started in technology?

I can’t really remember not being into technology. I’ve always had a drive to discover how things work and to find a way to improve them, so it didn’t take long to become fascinated with computers and programming. I remember growing up I was constantly trying to maximize PC time: from gaming, to surfing the web, to Olympiad training and building cool projects for science fairs with my friends.

A very interesting project my friends and I worked on was to reconstruct citadels, housing, tools, armors, and weapons from ancient Dacia in 3D, which involved a lot of imagination and piecing together information from several historians. We used a 3D game engine to create an interactive experience where the user could explore citadels and witness fights between Romans and Dacians.

What projects are you working on now?

One of the projects I am currently developing is ASTRO, a versatile robot solution designed to improve productivity and safety in the workplace. Its name is an acronym for Assistance, Safety and Telepresence Robot Officemate. ASTRO is built on three main pillars:

Keeping people healthy, comfortable, & safe: The well-being of people working in the office is a top priority for ASTRO. Using its sensor suite, ASTRO makes sure everything from temperature to air quality stays optimal within the office environment, and broadcasts notifications if anything is out of range.

Making virtual presence simple and efficient: Maintaining a fine level of team communication is essential for distributed teams working together across different cities and time-zones. ASTRO adds a new layer of flexibility and quality for remote video conferences and meetings, by providing a sense of physical presence with colleagues and clients thousands of miles away.

Next-gen virtual assistant: ASTRO’s AI-driven 3D avatar can recognize its interlocutor and understand voice queries. In a nutshell, ASTRO possesses Audiovisual Conversational Intelligence powered by a suite of cognitive functions such as face detection, emotion recognition, advanced speech and language understanding.

ASTRO uses Intel® RealSense™ cameras and the Intel® Computer Vision SDK for navigation and object recognition, while the Intel® IoT Gateway Technology helps secure cloud communication. My friend Andrei is developing ASTRO’s visual interface and focusing on making the 3D avatar as smart and pleasant to interact with as possible.

Working on ASTRO has been an outstanding learning experience, especially in technical areas such as hardware, industrial design, vison, artificial intelligence, and user experience. We are currently working on functionalities and exploring market fit.

Tell us about a technology challenge you’ve had to overcome in a project.

One of the most challenging projects I have worked on is HELIOS. The goal of HELIOS is to improve the sight for people with low vision by carefully blending artificial intelligence, 3D sensors, and VR technology. In a nutshell, our computer vision software processes 3D camera data to provide the most relevant information for the visually impaired user. For example, if there are objects or obstacles nearby, the user can spot them in real-time. As seen in this demo, if an object contains written text or an obstacle turns out to be a person, the built-in reading assist and people recognition are automatically activated.

A major technical challenge for this project was to make our vision enhancement algorithms work fluently on lightweight devices such as x86 tablets. Our research led us to Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP), a royalty-free library that provides high performance, low-level routines for imaging, cryptography, signal processing and data compression. By taking advantage of Intel® IPP functions we managed to improve image processing time and meet the frames-per-second (FPS) goals for our vision algorithms.

What trends do you see happening in technology in the near future?

Cognitive IoT, AI, and machine learning are steadily becoming a ubiquitous part of our cities, homes, means of transport, appliances, and wearables. There is much work involved in the process, therefore a lot of room for innovation. With privacy norms becoming more relaxes, I believe personal assistants, robots, drones, and mixed reality devices will also see exponential growth in the near future.

How does Intel help you succeed?

The greatest benefit of working with Intel is being so close to the forefront of technology that it becomes more obvious where future innovation needs to happen. I believe the Intel Software Innovator program is very successful in empowering a community of creative and driven individuals to collaborate and create amazing things. The most forward-thinking projects I’ve worked on over the past years have Intel® technology at their core.

Outside of technology, what type of hobbies do you enjoy?

That’s a pretty difficult question given most of my favorite activities, such as speaking at conferences and getting to meet outstanding people across the globe are technology related. That being said, I am a great fan of science fiction novels and whenever I get the opportunity I like to travel to beautiful new places, preferably somewhere with a sea front.

Want to learn more about the Intel® Software Innovator Program?

You can read about our innovator updates, get the full program overview, meet the innovators and learn more about innovator benefits. We also encourage you to check out Developer Mesh to learn more about the various projects that our community of innovators are working on.

Interested in more information? Contact  Wendy Boswell. 

Konstantin Popov has used his expertise in 3D technologies to build the Cappasity platform. Cappasity is a solution that allows online retailers to easily scan their products in 3D and embed them on their website. As one of the top Intel® Software Innovators of 2016, Konstantin took some time to tell us about Cappasity and the new direction the platform is headed toward.

Tell us about your background.

Technology has dramatically changed our daily lives. I believe that these changes are of great significance. So it has always been important for me to be one of those who bring them about.

I founded my first company in 2005 and it specialized in video game development. Computer games were a new media format. There are some formats that allow one to influence people and transmit information, such as movies, music, etc. Computer games fall into this category as well, but games are the most influential format because of their interactivity. As PC gaming hardware developed, those things that had been impossible became possible. It was the period of growth, so I was very interested in this industry.

As technology adapted, so did we. GPUs reached a new level in their development and allowed developers to render faster and more realistic graphics. The latter was interesting for us and in high demand in the market. So the internal goal to develop only 3D technologies was set and we started to work towards it. It took us more than a year to create our own 3D graphics engine.

Four years ago we set up Cappasity to develop 3D digitizing software for fast and accessible 3D content production and in January 2017 we then launched the Cappasity platform. The latest version of the platform is used by online retailers and we have started to work with museums and art galleries as well. The platform allows users to easily make 3D models of their products and place them on their websites.

Tell us more about Cappasity.

Currently, we are working on a new version of the Cappasity platform that is based on blockchain technology and allows for easy, quick, and inexpensive production and exchange of high-quality 3D content. In fact, we are launching a global decentralized AR/VR ecosystem to provide all developers and users of 3D content with a convenient environment and all the necessary tools for fruitful interaction. Blockchain technology solves two problems: the block chain allows us to securely store copyright information and reduce transaction fees to close to nothing within the marketplace.

Tell us about a technology challenge you’ve had to overcome with the Cappasity platform.

We have developed a solution that allows for fast AR/VR/3D content production. Our product, Cappasity Easy 3D Scan, is already available for PC and Mac. However, the most difficult part is still ahead – we are preparing a mobile version of the product for release. There are a lot of technical problems that are being solved. To digitize objects, users will use completely different devices with different cameras and expect 3D models to be high quality.

How does the 3D scan work?

To make a 3D image of an object, you needs a photography turntable, lighting equipment, and a photo camera. An object is placed on the turntable, the table rotates, and the camera records a video of the object. Then, the program automatically processes the video data. It can take up to three minutes to create a 3D image of an object. Due to this valuable feature, we can work with online retailers that have large product catalogs. However, this feature is of critical importance to our clients. We are also currently working on a mobile application that will allow one to make 3D images of objects wherever they want – without requiring either a turntable or lighting equipment.

What technology trends do you see happening in the near future?

AR/VR technologies have made a quantum leap in their development over the last few years. Today these technologies are integrating into various industries more and more actively. They are in high demand in e-commerce, entertainment, art, medicine, education, and some other industries. The public’s interest in AR/VR will continue to increase and gain momentum.

How does Intel help you succeed?

Thanks to Intel, we have quick access to new technologies that are just on the verge of appearing on the market. Intel engineers have given their strong support for the development of our platform and participated in the development of the Cappasity ecosystem.

Want to learn more about the Intel® Software Innovator Program?

You can read about our innovator updates, get the full program overview, meet the innovators and learn more about innovator benefits. We also encourage you to check out Developer Mesh to learn more about the various projects that our community of innovators are working on.

Interested in more information? Contact  Wendy Boswell. 

The Intel® Nervana™ AI Academy for Students program was created to work collaboratively with students at innovative schools and universities doing great work in the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence space. Intel® Student Ambassador Suprabhat Das took the time to share his philosophies on life and how he wants to use technologies like deep learning to improve our environments and lives.  

Tell us about your background.

I am currently pursuing a Bachelor of Technology under the Computer Science & Engineering program at Amity University Kolkata. I have been a constant worker and over the last two years I’ve had more than 35 internships under many well-renowned organizations including Central Drug Research India (CSIR), National Institute for Industrial Training, Entrepreneurship Development & Research Council of India, Microsoft, and HackerEarth among others. 

As an ardent helper-for-all by nature, I have also been generous with providing my services as a graphics designer to innumerable non-governmental organizations in India like Sapne, a Delhi-based foundation and Eride, where I worked as a Digital Marketing intern. A thought I preach is: “Think global, act local.” And my personal mantra for success is: “Be a trend-setter rather than being a trend-follower.”

What got you started in technology?

At school I was elected as Vice-President of the IT Club, and being a part of that allowed me to really delve into technology and its uses in various domains. After that, when I joined University, I started getting intensely involved in technology because of my participation in various workshops, seminars, and conferences. I had a love for computers since childhood, but the inclination to do and learn more with technology really started after reaching university where I began learning about technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, etc. Dr. Anirban Das, Head of Department for Computer Science and Engineering, has supported and guided me in this regard despite his busy schedule. We’ve had many discussions after classes on the latest IT trends and technological advancements and I am indebted to him for his ongoing mentorship, cooperation, and blessings.

What projects are you working on now?

I am part of two laboratories here at Amity University Kolkata, the Innovation Lab and the Programming Lab. I have done a project entitled “External Device Tracker” that uses Java technology. I’ve also worked on several web development projects, which eventually led to my involvement in a leading application security company, TeamCognito, as Chief Operating Officer.

I have also published a paper entitled “Neuro-Linguistic Programming” (NLP) in International Journal of Engineering Science Technology and Research which focused on the basics of NLP like its origin, pillars, basic assumptions and implementations. I also published “Review Paper for Wireless Power Transmission for Charging Mobile Devices” in the International Journal of Engineering and Computer Science. The working model of the review paper is in the process of being made and I am excited to complete this as soon as possible.

Tell us about a technology challenge you’ve had to overcome in a project.

I didn’t have much prior knowledge in electronic and electrical domains when I started getting into wireless power transmission, so that was hard for me. I had to learn most of the things from scratch, but I found it rewarding at the end to be able to frame a review paper. As for the making of the working model, it is taking a lot of time. I believe the most challenging task to perform is to be able to make the system portable and cost-effective.

What trends do you see happening in technology?

Personally, I’m amazed at the technology we have available to us. In the near future, the trends I can see are in IoT, augmented reality, virtual reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science, automation, big data, etc. and where these technologies can take us.

How are you planning to leverage artificial intelligence or deep learning technologies in your work?

Currently, I am beginning to work on new innovation project: Carbon Footprint Analysis for a Better Tomorrow. We want to design software for an individual car-owner to get a detailed analysis of emissions at the end of the day and based on that report, the quality check, and vehicle pollution check can determine their carbon footprint for the day. This way environmental pollution can be reduced efficiently and with eco-friendly tools. This can be widely accepted at both a local and global scale, is highly sustainable, and will have high market value due to its dependency.

There are several facets of the project that we are working on. We need a sensor that can measure the emissions and provide real-time data to the server for carbon footprint analysis. We need to have certain benchmark values to check against and if the value is higher, the respective owner will be notified via their mobile. Based on specified criteria, the user can be notified to get regular pollution checks of their vehicle as well. In this way, the tool will not only prevent the car from permanent damage but also prevent environmental degradation. The tools required are quite easily available, but we need to discuss this more with environmentalists that are involved in analyzing carbon footprints and carbon data analytics.

The second part of the project is the collection and analyzation of data. I believe that we will deeply rely on deep learning for this more enhanced part of the project. I created the idea and abstract on my own and now that the project has been accepted in the poster section of the New Frontiers in Engineering, Science & Technology (NFEST-2018), I am getting university students that are interested to join me. The next step is research to take us from the idea stage where we are now, to the prototype phase.

What are you looking forward to doing as an Intel® Student Ambassador?

I am looking forward to gaining more experience with real-world applications that Intel is working on and exchanging knowledge and opinions among other Student Ambassadors. I believe that working as a team provides different perspectives and approaches to the solution. I’m also excited to publish and share the progress I am making with my work. Having the opportunity to get access to an Intel® Xeon Phi™ cluster is amazing. Also, having contact with engineers that work there is a great resource to have.

How can Intel help students like you succeed?

Intel is one of the companies leading the world with innovations and ideas. Intel has always been passionate about technology. This student developer program, led by Intel, offers information and state-of-the –art approaches that are currently being used which I believe will help me to continue my research efficiently.

What impact on the world do you see AI having? And do you see yourself as part of it?

Artificial intelligence is already transforming the world of work, but the future is hard to predict. Some people are saying that it will replace employees, while some are saying that it will only increase work efficiency thereby reducing the workload on humans and saving time. From self-driving cars to automated systems, all are prevalent now. I hope to make my living in solving problems and contributing to research, like in my focus on carbon footprint analysis.

Outside of technology, what sort of hobbies do you enjoy?

To finally talk about some of my fun activities! I am a voracious reader and a diehard Agatha Christie fan. I also enjoy brainstorming on Jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, Rubik’s Cube, and crosswords. I am an athlete and enjoy swimming. I love football and Lionel Messi is my golden player of all time. I’m also a sketcher and I even own a repository of doodles and kohl sketches. Under Creative Image Box, I have also been an active content writer.

Despite having a long list of goals to achieve academically, I am a proud universal citizen. I am an expert in negotiating time to allocate enough for sustaining my personal, professional, and spiritual lives. My modus operandi for functioning includes spending time with my family, friends, and science journals on a regular basis in order to fulfil my target of dreaming big and making it bigger.

I am also a big believer in volunteering. I was a Campaign Volunteer at HelpAge India where I received a Certificate of Social Service for creating awareness and assistance in raising funds for the care of the elderly, irrespective of race, religion, caste or creed. I received a Certificate of Appreciation for my work as a Campaign Volunteer at SOS Children’s Villages of India for my participation in the work for the children in need. I am registered with DATRI as a potential blood stem cell donor; something I am very proud to be associated with. I’m an ongoing community volunteer work at SillyCon India and I also am a contributing author, writing inspirational stories for the Good News Newspaper.

Want to learn more? Check out our Student Developer Zone, join Intel® Developer Mesh, or learn more about becoming a Student Ambassador

Interested in more information? Contact Niven Singh

AI Student Ambassador Karandeep Singh Dhillon: Using Deep Learning to Solve Real-World Issues

With an extreme interest in deep learning and a love of coding, Student Ambassador Karandeep is creating parking and safe driving applications using AI.

How to Build a Face Access Control Solution

Use this IoT reference implementation to create a facial recognition application.

FIDGETECH*: Where Technology and Autism Meet

Intel® Software worked with FIDGETECH* to create a Game Jam where young autistic adults were taught game design by professional game developers.

Intel® HPC Developer Conference: For the HPC Practitioner

The Intel HPC Developer Conference 2017 aims to deliver practical, hands-on advice that attendees can apply to their development efforts. Register today!

AI Developers and Students ‘Go Big’ at Intel® Nervana™ AI Academy DevJam Event

500 attendees at the AI DevJam events worked on sharpening their machine learning skills, as well as engaging with Intel and external AI experts who are part of Intel’s Innovator and Student Ambassador programs.

Digital Happiness Taking DreadEye Aim at VR

A haunted high school? Digital Happiness uses VR to amp up the horror with it’s new release, DreadEye.

Intel® Xeon® Processor Scalable Family

Learn about how new technical features and micro architectures increase the performance of the latest offering from the Intel® Xeon processor family.

Green Man Gaming* and Intel Help PC Game Developers Grow

Millions of gamers worldwide discuss, discover, and share all things gaming at Green Man Gaming, an eCommerce business that helps independent development studios market their games globally.

Get Started with IoTivity* on Intel Devices

Use this tutorial to get started on IoTivity, a framework that is cross-platform, architecture independent, and an open-source solution for developers to use with their IoT devices.

Spider-Man*: Homecoming Virtual Reality Experience with Intel® Innovator, Justin Lassen

Working with Sony* Pictures VR, Marvel* Studios, and Intel, Justin Lassen created this Spider-Man* virtual reality experience.

Intel® Developer Zone experts, Intel® Software Innovators, and Intel® Black Belt Software Developers contribute hundreds of helpful articles and blog posts every month. From code samples to how-to guides, we gather the most popular software developer stories in one place each month so you don’t miss a thing.  Missed last month?  Read it here.