Gargantuan chipmaker Intel has made a major move in the embedded systems market, announcing an agreement to acquire Wind River for some $884 million in cash. Wind River makes the proprietary VxWorks real-time embedded operating system, which is widely used in consumer products like appliances and vehicles. By acquiring Wind River, Intel essentially guarantees that its x86 platforms will be major players in the embedded systems area, and makes the company’s technology a serious competitor to British embedded RISC processor maker ARM.
