Intel’s $880m purchase of Wind River shows just how serious the microprocessor firm is about developing its embedded systems business.
Intel’s interest in Wind River centres on the software developer’s real-time VxWorks operating system (RTOS) and its Linux OS, both of which are needed to support any embedded hardware offering.
Just as important will be the design effort Wind River has been putting into the development of operating systems and software for both asymmetric and symmetric multi-core processor systems.
Indeed, this is an area where the companies have been collaborating for some time.
What this means is that with the addition of Wind River’s operating systems, software and its partner programme, Intel is positioning itself to take on arguably its biggest competitor in the embedded processor market, ARM.
Traditionally dedicated to the standalone microprocessor business, Intel started to develop a serious interest in selling embedded processor cores little more than 18 months ago.
Last year’s launch of the Atom processor gave Intel an embedded processor core aimed at mobile and industrial applications.
The next significant move came in March when
Intel announced that it was making the Atom processor available as an embedded core for system-on-chip (SoC) designs being manufactured at foundry TSMC.
Atom is already in more than a dozen embedded SoC designs.
Intel has even developed its own Linux operating system and developer community called Moblin to support Atom.
The next, and maybe last, piece in the jigsaw for Intel was this
week’s
purchase of Wind River.
Intel has recognised that in the embedded market a processor company can no longer rely on its hardware capabilities - processor architecture and process technology - to win business.
Embedded customers require more than just chips. They need a complete hardware and software platform, which incorporates not just the operating system but also middleware, APIs and even a range of applications software.
Before last week’s acquisition of Wind River, Intel’s software capabilities did not match its hardware capabilities.
It was weaker in providing the right OS and other software elements of embedded platforms, say for mobile devices, than providing the processor cores themselves.
Now it has spent $880m to redress that balance.
Something else changed last week.
No longer will Intel be seen as just a microprocessor company.