Intel Buys Embedded Software Vendor Wind River

SlashDotDotDot writes "The New York Times reports that Intel will purchase Wind River, the embedded OS and software vendor, for $884 million. 'Wind River makes operating systems for platforms as diverse as autos and mobile phones, serving customers like Sony and Boeing. Intel, whose processors run about 80 percent of the world's personal computers, is expanding into new markets, including chips for televisions and mobile devices. Wind River's software and customer list will pave the way for Intel to win more chip contracts.'"

Yuck

[Red Flayer]

Uh-oh...

I'm not a big fan of one of the largest chipmakers venturing into embedded systems. Given Intel's track record, something tells me that things are going to get fugly for companies that sell embedded systems as a component of larger products.

I sure hope someone will be playing close attention to Intel's pricing... if they use Wind River's systems as a loss leader for their chips, that would suck for a competitive chip market.

Re:Yuck

[phantomfive]

I'm not sure that it's all that great of a move. Wind River generally targets projects with small chips (mainly ARM, these days) for embedded projects. Intel doesn't actually make chips like that, the smallest they have is ATOM, which is still pretty hefty. If you're running an ATOM chip, why not use linux embedded or WinCE? It's a lot easier to use and find developers for.

In my mind this either signals that Intel is going to try to make smaller chips (and probably fail, since x86 is a beast), or have a nonexistent target market, but they should have realized this. The only thing I can think of really is that Intel realized that they have no clue what kind of chips embedded software developers need, and they thought the easiest way to get that expertise would be to buy an embedded software company.

Maybe there's another motive, but I can't see it. And given the number of weird ideas I've seen from analysts, I don't think many other people understand either.

Maybe the CEO of Intel has a brother in law at Wind River who needs some financial help? Who knows.

The future is ARM and Linux

[bzzfzz]

Unless Intel decides to get as serious about the embedded world as they have been historically about the desktop, this amounts to last rites for Wind River. Starting with the 80186 [wikimedia.org] in 1982, Intel's embedded processor offerings have been adaptations of desktop technology that have failed to stimulate the imagination of anyone building anything more sexy than a cash register. The needs of the embedded device market differ considerably and Intel does not understand them. Intel's idea of having a more highly integrated northbridge/southbridge/CPU package is just wrong. The embedded market needs products that don't have architectures that complicated rather than band-aids.

At this point, I'll take Linux with a GCC toolchain [gnuarm.com] over VxWorks for any embedded project just to avoid the single-company support choke point and the costs and hassles with licensing. The nominally higher levels of integration and sophistication of commercial products aren't worth it.

Re:Yuck

[LordNimon]

If Intel just wanted better VxWorks support for their chips, they could have done that for a lot less than $900 million, and they wouldn't need to buy the whole company. For less than a million per year, they could have had a few of their own employees work on-site at Wind River exclusively on improving VxWorks support for Intel products.

Re:Yuck

[jd]

Exactly. On the other hand, if Microsoft is buying up companies that are involved in the Embedded market, then Microsoft would have to pay Intel whatever Intel asked in order to get Windows to interoperate better with such system (or replace the OS entirely).

This would give Intel some small degree of leverage that it simply wouldn't have otherwise, and would prevent Microsoft from buying those embedded OS makers themselves (which would give Microsoft even more power over Intel - something I doubt Intel desires).

This is why I can see a defensive reason for Intel wanting Wind River, but no offensive reason. I can see nothing Wind River can give Intel that Intel couldn't have obtained for less, as you note, OTHER than protection from the consequences of Microsoft owning Wind River.

Re:Yuck

[symbolset]

I'm going to fix that for you.

Microsoft entering the X market by buying up an X vendor, rebranding it as its own product, then leveraging its monopoly to make said product the de-facto X product SHOULD have run afoul of many anti-trust laws.

Now permute X across all markets including OS, office software, programming languages, databases, antivirus, full disk compression, full disk encryption, folder compression, and every other darned thing they sell. They didn't invent any of it. They buy the pot of soup, pee in the pot, then sell the soup. That's their business model and it always has been. They used to be really good at selling that watered down soup, and that's why they're where they're where they're at. Now, I'm not so sure everybody wants their soup.

Oh, and the above is not entirely correct. Sometimes they promise the pot to a chef who prepares the soup, and then kill him for the recipe before the batch is done. [theregister.co.uk] They even coined a name for that strategy: "Knife the baby [theregister.co.uk]". When people find out about that, they're less likely to be interested in working in their kitchen.