Intel has planned to allocate US$884 million for buying Wind River Systems which produces software for embedded devices, in an effort to realize the company’s two priorities.
Embedded devices are machines that do no look like computers but have computers inside - be they factory robots or portable music players.
Intel has been building up its software activities, with 3,000 programmers making some products to sell and more commonly expanding the uses for its chips.
To begin the step, Intel will team up with Microsoft, whose products are tightly connected to Intel’s own flagship line of microprocessors. Microsoft’s Windows Embedded CE operating system is the largest competitor to Wind River’s operating systems.
Possibly the Intel-Microsoft alliances is big enough to handle this sort of competition. After all, Intel has been a big backer of Linux, and Windows Embedded runs on non-Intel chips.
But Microsoft issued a rather stiff-upper-lipped statement in reaction to the acquisition. Microsoft has a robust partner community, of which Intel is a part. The impact on Wind River is harder to evaluate. More than 70% of its software runs on chips made by companies other than Intel.
Indeed, Wind River said earlier this year that it will work to adapt Google’s Android operating system to run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, a major competitor to Atom. How many of its customers will start asking how much Intel is going to support rival chips?
Intel declined to make any executives available to discuss the acquisition. Bill Kircos, an Intel spokesman, said it will keep Wind River as a separate subsidiary, and that it would create appropriate firewalls to make sure that information from other chip makers is not divulged to other parts of Intel.
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