Anticipating the emergence of new applications that will be
delivered over the Internet as services, Intel plans to release for
testing the performance of these new applications on its
chips.
At the Intel Developer Forum, the company previewed a tool called
the VTune Enterprise Analyzer, which it plans to release later this
year. The tool will allow developers to test the performance of Web
services, as it sends and processes information across the
Internet.
Developers would use the VTune Enterprise Analyzer to diagnose the
various interactions that take place between the components of a
Web service, Intel said. For example, the tool will detail which
components of the Web service take the longest time to
process.
In an example using a bike shop, Richard Wirt, of the company's
enterprise platform group, simulated a series of Web services that
would link the computer system of a bike shop to the systems of its
vendor partners. Using Web services based on XML, developed using
Microsoft .net Framework, the bike shop would be able to enter
inventory totals into an application on a handheld device and have
that information automatically integrated into an Excel spreadsheet
on the bike shop's desktop PC.
Once the inventory was in the spreadsheet, another Web service was
able to compile from various sources the latest pricing for each of
the products, and integrate that information directly into the
Excel spreadsheet. Finally, the bike shop could then use a Web
service to automatically place orders with its various vendors in
order to replenish its inventory.
After the services were completed, the VTune Enterprise Analyzer
was able to test the performance of each Web service by measuring
the speed and efficiency of each interaction among the handheld,
the PC and the server. A developer could use the diagnosis to tweak
components of a Web service to increase its performance, Intel
said.
In addition to testing Web services developed using Microsoft's
.net Framework, the VTune tool will be able to test Java
applications, Intel said.
"Both .net and Java will be driving factors in this [next] phase of
the Internet," Wirt said.
Intel also plans to release a compiler and toolkit it developed for
multithreading applications, which are applications that can run
different functions simultaneously. Currently available in its beta
version, the Intel Threading Toolkit will generate threads in an
application automatically using the Intel-designed compiler. It
supports applications built for the Windows NT and Linux operating
systems.
The Intel Threading Toolkit is expected to be available for final
release later this year, the company said.