by In the latest concrete demonstration of Microsoft’s return to engagement with the hardware design and driver development community, the long awaited return of WinHEC was announced earlier today in a blog post by Microsoft’s Matt Perry. For those of you who don’t know Matt, he works in Microsoft’s SPiCE (Silicon, Peripheral and Component Enablement) team.
It’s been a long time since the last WinHEC, and as Matt rightly notes, lots of things have changed since then. Chief among those changes are the speed at which innovation happens in the industry and the increasing globalization of hardware and system software development.
Given these changes, Microsoft has chosen Shenzhen (in Southern China, on the boarder with Hong Kong) as the first venue for the new WinHEC. A follow-on conference in Taipei is also apparently being discussed.
Another interesting change: The acronym WinHEC has been changed from its historical meaning “Windows Hardware Engineering Conference” to now stand for “Windows Hardware Engineering Community” — The conference is being billed as a “summit meeting” for that community.
The announcement of WinHEC in Shenzhen is just the most recent indication of Microsoft’s new willingness to be more open and engaging with hardware and driver developers world-wide. At the Build conference in San Francisco in April 2014, Microsoft announced the joint development with Intel of the Shark’s Cove development board. That board started shipping in volume in September.
We’re going to keep an eye on this development, and try to dig for more details. For more info, check our blog often, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the OSR Hints and Tips mailing list (send a blank email to osrhints@lists.osr.com to join).
See you in Shenzhen?
OSR Open Systems Resources, Inc.