Intel said Thursday that it would acquire Wind River, which makes software for embedded systems. The deal is valued at $884 million.
Wind River Systems will enhance Intel’s embedded software position as in-car systems, smart meters and mobile Internet devices proliferate. Wind River has customers in the aerospace, industrial, and networking equipment business. The company’s operating system, VxWorks is a proprietary, real-time operating system and has BMW, Boeing, NASA, Northrop Grumman, Sony and others as customers. The company says Wind River Linux is the industry’s leading Linux platform for embedded device development.
Wind River is also a member of the Open handset Alliance, and has a commercial software solution based on Google’s Android that runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets.
Intel’s Atom-based automotive infotainment reference design is based on the new Genivi Alliance specification. It runs Wind River Linux. In March, the two companies signed a major deal on supporting multi-core designs in aerospace and defense, network infrastructure, industrial, medical, and print imaging market segments, spanning Wind River’s Linux and VxWorks platforms.
The acquisition will boost Wind River’s Intel-architecture focused sales, says Intel. It is unclear, however, the extent to which the new subsidiary might support development on other platforms where Wind River has long-standing relationships with semiconductor companies including ARM, Texas Instruments and Freescale. Wind River has about 1,600 employees and annual sales of $359.7 million.
Embedded systems are dedicated to specific tasks, so design engineers can optimize it, reducing the size and cost of the product, or increasing the reliability and performance.
