Intel to acquire Wind River Systems to own leading RTOS VxWorks

Intel has announced it is acquiring Wind River Systems for approximately $884 Million. This is an excellent move by Intel to get into embedded systems market. Embedded systems market is more controlled by the RTOS and other such embedded system software rather than hardware or semiconductor (microcontrollers and SoCs) chips. Few surveys also points out that, the embedded system designers are more loyal to Operating System and embedded software tools rather than the microcontroller and also VxWorks is the most popular RTOS among the embedded folks.

Intel says, Wind River is a leading software vendor in embedded devices, and will become part of Intel's strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices.
This is a clear indication that Intel doesn't want to neglect any more the embedded otherwise called microcontroller market.

"This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities," said Renee James, Intel vice president and general manager of the company's Software and Services Group. "Wind River has thousands of customers in a wide range of markets, and now both companies will be better positioned to meet growth opportunities in these areas."

"Our combination of strengths will be of great benefit to Wind River's existing and future customers," said Ken Klein, Wind River Chairman, president and CEO. "As a wholly owned subsidiary, Wind River will more tightly align its software expertise to Intel's platforms to speed the pace of progress and software innovation. We remain committed to continuing to provide leading solutions across multiple hardware architectures and delivering the same world-class support to which our customers have grown accustomed."

With this acquisition, Intel is aiming to lead in both software and semiconductor areas of embedded systems and portable convergence device market which include products such as smart phones, media players, mobile Internet devices, consumer electronics (CE) devices, automotive electronic devices, networking equipment, aerospace and defense, energy and lot more such devices.

Intel said this multi-billion dollar market opportunity is increasingly becoming connected and more intelligent, requiring supporting applications and services as well as full
Internet functionality.

The strong competitor for Intel with both processor and software capability is ARM. ARM runs a separate software company called Keil to complement its processors with software development tools.

In the microcontroller market it's a strategy to have a separate software company or a close partner who is an embedded tool developer. Recently Microchip has acquired Australian based Hi-Tech Software. Most of the microcontroller chip vendors have big software development teams mostly in places like India where rich embedded software talent is available.