Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Intel used to have its own real-time controls division, with the iRMX operating system written in PL/M and PL/M-86, Multibus and Multibus-II hardware, and a development system that ran on Xenix and MS-DOS. They systematically dumped the whole thing in the '90s, finally handing RMX over to TenAsys in 2000.
Guess it's time for that old second marriage.
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 ... At this point, I'll take Linux with a GCC toolchain over VxWorks for any embedded project just to avoid the single-company support choke point and the costs and hassles with licensing.
You're aware that Wind River has offered its own optimized Linux distro for embedded systems for years now, including extensions for real-time systems? And that it runs on ARM and XScale?
Breakfast served all day!
VxWorks seems to have been around forever in the high performance embedded computing scene, with solid VME support. (Amazing how VME keeps going, it was "on the way out" when I started life as a junior hardware engineer 20 years ago.) The software engineers I work with hate it, though. Extremely late "proper" support for PCI and likewise for SMP are a couple of issues I recall causing much annoyance. Unfortunately our customers keep using and re-using it, so we accept it as a necessary evil.
The problem for my business is that we (like many embedded folks) are still doing good business with the PowerPC architecture, despite the frustrations of PA Semi's disappearance, and something of standstill on high end devices at Freescale and IBM. Surely the perception will develop that yet another roadblock to using PowerPC in embedded systems is going to develop.
So I guess we high end embedded folks will have to jump on the Intel bandwagon. I just hope something positive happens on the BIOS front - that's one area where PowerPC is really great (U-Boot, CFE etc.) Having looked at Intel for ATCA products in the past, the BIOS issue was IIRC an outrageously expensive nightmare if you wanted source code, and plain expensive if not...
I would be very tempted by Atom and Tolapai if I could get U-Boot (or something as good) for Intel. How helpful are Intel to open source BIOS efforts?
Hello dear /.ers,
Intel has made it very clear to WRS that WRS will be maintained [semi] autonomously - WRS has lots of deals with Intel's competitors, and Intel has lots of deals with WRS' competitors. However, WRS was already working very closely with Intel on products supporting the Intel architecture, and WRS has embedded/os knowledge and strategic connections that could prove extremely useful to Intel.
Intel has also made it extremely clear to all involved (WRS employees & customers) that it's not desirable (to anyone!) to drop non-Intel architecture support. Bubbling through the ranks, that message is affecting priorities - WRS very much does not want to scare non-Intel customers away.
So, from the WRS perspective, we may get a little bit more help/tools from Intel (yay), we may be able to stop taking mandatory vacation time (yeesh), and they may even bring some of our other benefits back. So far a good thing. I wouldn't expect any major changes to products in the near future.
disclaimer: I am not a WRS marketing guy. I am an engineer working on architectural code for many architectures, Intel included. I am also an avid /. reader.
There you go - horse's mouth, so to speak.
If Intel in any way restricts VxWorks for other architectures compared to any of Intel's, I think real time Linux work will surge. Right now (for us) VxWorks really is the only solution. The current real time-ish Linuxes available are not deterministic enough (we took probe measurements), but if that changes, we might gladly switch, if only because of the extreme cost of VxWorks. It'll also be interesting to see what happens to the support department behind VxWorks, as it has waned recently.
Wrong, Wind River bought all Walnut Creek assets, then kicked Slackware to the curb. Patrick had to fire his 2 employees, and go back to a one man show.
All they wanted was BSD, cause they could keep that closed.
No, Wind River was no friend to Linux.
They Live, We Sleep
It's also one of the very, very few OSes certified for aircraft. Wind River paid a good amount of money to get it certified, and as a customer you will pay an arm and a leg through your nose to get that certified software. It's one of the reasons on a (very) short list that we use it instead of Linux for a lot of software that goes on aircraft. Personally, I'm not too impressed with vxWorks, but I am a little disturbed by Intel picking them up; most embedded systems I've ever worked with are non-Intel (mostly PowerPC). How will this affect their support of non-Intel platforms? Of course, I was mildly annoyed when one of my former employers sold Wind River RTLinux, but they still seem to be going strong.
Nathan's blog
after they bought out BSDi (who got 'em from walnut creek)