Survey on development environment issues

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We're interested in customers' views on some development environment issues. Please reply here in the forum in whatever form you find convenient. Any comments you wish to add are welcome. Thanks.

1. Microsoft has announced plans to release Visual Studio 2005 sometime next year. How soon afterward do you think you will switch to Visual Studio 2005?

a) 0-3 months

b) 3-6 months

c) 6-12 months

d) Later or may not switch

e) Don't know

2. Visual Studio 2005 will include support for cross-compilation, where you can, for example, compile on an IA-32 system for an Itanium target. How important is cross-compilation to you?

a) Very important

b) Important

c) Somewhat important

d) Not important

e) Don't know

3. For the following host and target combinations, please rate each one on a scale of 1-4 with 1 meaning not important and 4 meaning very important

- IA-32 host to IA-32 target (native IA-32)

- IA-32 host to Intel EM64T target

- IA-32 host to Intel Itanium target

- Intel EM64T host to IA-32 target

- Intel EM64T host to Intel EM64T target (native Intel EM64T)

- Intel EM64T host to Intel Itanium target

- Intel Itanium host to Intel Itanium target (native Intel Itanium

If there are other host-target combinations of interest to you, please list them and rate their importance

[durisinm]

1. 6-12 months. My general philosophy is not to be on the bleeding edge of big new software releases. I'll let others be the lab rats and stumble across the problems in the new release. Microsoft being the omnipresent juggernaut that it is, I figure that I'll have to switch to keep from being left behind.

2. Somewhat important. I suspect, however, that it will gradually become more important to many programmers as 64-bit operating systems, CPUs, and application software become more widespread in the marketplace.

3. 4, ?, 1, ?, ?, ?, 1. My same remarks from the previous answer apply.

I guess that I haven't been paying attention. Please define what EM64T is. That's why I have question marks in this answer.

Mike D.

[TimP]

I expect to see software vendors I work with adopting VS2005 first for EM64T, and doing so as soon as everything is working. Yes, Fortran is needed, OpenMP and MPI important too. Lack of one or more of those will continue to hold Itanium back.

I suspect cross compilation is not as important as (1) reliability (2) performance.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Intel EM64T is "Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology", 64-bit extensions to the 32-bit IA-32 architecture, broadly compatible with AMD's 64-bit offerings. Currently available in Xeon processors for servers, but over the next year or two it will filter down to desktop and mobile processors.

Intel's Fortran and C++ compilers support compiling for Intel EM64T (and AMD Opteron) - you get the EM64T compiler through a download from Premier Support at this time.

[Jugoslav_Dujic]

1) 0-3 months. I agree with Mike about the general philosophy, but VS.NET 2002/2003 is IMO so poor product that I'm eager to see anything new. I heard some positive initial comments on VS 2005.

2) Somewhat important. Mike said it all.

3) 4, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1

Jugoslav

[nijhuis]

1) 6-12 month (comments: see Mike and Jugoslav)

2) Somewhat important, though it will grow to "important" when the users of my programs decide to switch to the other systems

3) 4, 1, 1,1, 1, 1 at this moment

Guus

[sabalan]

1) d

2) d

3) 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

Sabalan.

[Paul_Curtis]

1. d

2. d

3. 4,1,1,1,1,1,1

Much more important than the above would be fixing the many broken features of the current VSintegration, to at least recover the level of performance of CVF/DevStudio (ie, integrated Fortran help,dependency checking, etc.)

[keefer]

I think Mike's philosophy (and priorities) are shared by many users. I share Paul-Curtis' view of VS 1 and 2, but I think Jugoslav has a more realistic attitude: why would MS spend any time fixing a broken product when they have a new one coming out that they can charge for. The putrid performance of VS1, etc. simply provides an inducement to pay more for something that actually works.

I think the real issue here is what cost effective upgrade paths are going to be available. Shelling out $500-600 for a new processor that also requires a new $100-$200 MB (unless Intel is going to release a 478 pin version of an EMT64 processor :) is pretty spendy already. Having to buy a 64 bit version of Windows for another $400-$500 in addition to VS 2005 drives an upgrade out ofa Desktop Users budget, especially if is only an interim (e.g. 1yr) solution.

Regards,

Keith

[hansr]

1) d

2) d

3) 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

Hans.

[wkramer]

1. c

2. c

3. 4 2 1 1 1 1 1

Walter kramer