I just came across an interesting blog written by Ken Klein, president of Wind River. The past few months have been quite interesting from my perch, covering the happenings at Wind River. But it's seems to be more speculation than anything. The conversations that I have with Wind River's competitors always seem to start with "How can we divide up Wind's share of the market?"

At some point, Wind River has to stop supporting all non-Intel architectures. As much as they say it's not true, I find it hard to believe. But for now, I'll take them at their word. We'll see what happens over time. It's not the first time that a processor maker has acquired an operating system vendor, and I'm hard pressed to come up with one that stayed independent.

In any event, read Klein's blog, then let me know what you think.

There was a ton of great content at ESC UK in Farnborough. Some of the highlights includes a pair of panels (both moderated by yours truly) and a Build Your Own Embedded System track, similar to what's offered at ESCs in the US. Like the Boston ESC, attendees received an Atom-based kit running Windows Embedded.

The two panels covered the Current State of Microelectronics and the Current State of Embedded. Both were mostly driven by questions from a standing-room-only crowd.

The Microelectronics panel consisted of reps from NXP, Freescale, ST, and Imagination Technologies. The questions ranged from, "what is an embedded system," to" who will win between Intel and ARM." (See video of Tony King-Smith, VP of Marketing for Imagination Technologies.) You could imagine what the responses were. (Note: Patrick Mannion offers his opinion on Intel vs. ARM on EETimes.com.) Some of those answers were caught on video, while others were audio-recorded. When I figure out how to post the audio and video, I'll do so. You'll get a kick out of the "what is an embedded system" question. I assure you, it's not the answer you'd give to your mom.

The State of Embedded panel featured three of the biggest stars and most widely recognized experts in the embedded arena—Jack Ganssle, Dan Saks, and Niall Cooling. They were asked questions like what programming language will be most popular five years from now; what advice can you give a student looking to get into the embedded space; and why doesn't anyone care about Java.

The most interesting discussion arose when the subject of Linux came up. Ganssle offered a response that certainly raised a few eyebrows. His declaration that "Linux sucks!" began a whole debate on whether Linux really has a place in the embedded market.

One man's opinion (mine) is that it definitely has a place, but it's not the be all, end all. For the right application, it's quite useful. Just don't have it run the plane that I'm riding or running the servers at my bank.

I brought up the topic a few months ago, but was told that there were too many roadblocks. Now, a few months later, it was one of the hotter topics at ESC Boston—whether Intel will acquire Freescale.

The news that came out last week, which was denied (sort of), was that Intel was acquiring Freescale's wireless operations in Toulouse, France. But why stop there? Why not acquire all of Freescale? Intel certainly has the assets to do so. It would really make them the king of the processor hill, possessing its own x86 architecture as well as a significant piece of the ARM business. It also gives them a nice entry into the automotive space, one they've previously not played in, at least in a manner that a Freescale acquisition would provide.

I talked this up with some people in the know at ESC last week, and everyone I encountered agreed that it made sense. One person even took it one step further, saying that he wouldn't be surprised if it moved Intel in to the IP space, a la ARM. That could put them in bed with the FPGA providers, something ARM is just starting to wrap its "arms" around.

What do think? Is this plausible? Does it make sense?

With so many things to write about from the Embedded Systems Conference last week, I hardly know where to start. So check back throughout the week as I'll try to cover each of the topics that are of most importance (and a couple that arose from sidebar conversations are really interesting).

First, an release that isn't derived from gossip, is the announcement from Green Hills that they're starting up a new business unit totally devoted to virtualization. At the time that I heard of the announcement, I questioned the need for a new business unit, and I'm still not sure I understand the reasoning. But regardless, it shows a strong commitment from the company in an area of technology that's just starting to come of age. Even before the announcement, there was little doubt in my mind that Green Hills was one of the leaders in this area.

According to a release made by the company, "The business unit’s flagship product, Integrity Secure Virtualization (ISV), supports hosting of Windows, Linux, VxWorks and other general purpose operating systems in secure virtual containers on ARM, Intel, Power and other processor architectures."

That sounds like virtualization to me.

As processors get more and more complex, the need for virtualization increases. And it's obvious that the processors are headed down that path.

I'm watching TV last night (watching my beloved Giants dominate the Redskins) and what do I see but a commercial for Windows 7. Unlike the last set of commercials done by Microsoft, this commercial was a pretty compelling pitch for Windows 7. But the kicker came at the end when they said you'd have to wait until October 22 to get a copy of the new OS.

I'm thinking to myself, "That's not true. All you need to do is attend the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston and you can not only get a copy of the embedded version of Windows 7, but you can an Intel Atom-based development platform to run the software on.

How can you go wrong? For more info, go to http://esc-boston.techinsightsevents.com.

If you remember Apple Inc. names like Michael Spindler and Jean-Louis Gassee, you're really an old-timer - and you remember the era without Steve Jobs when several missteps were made in Apple expansion. One of the saddest for residents of Colorado is when Apple made a big whoop-de-do in 1992 about establishing a global PowerBook manufacturing plant in Fountain, Colorado, only to sell the facility off in 1996. Spindler thought he could hold the tide against an inevitable wave of moving all system manufacturing to Asia, but it didn't last long.

I was sharing a lamentation with a research director at a components market-analysis firm, trading notes on the shrinking of staff that is endemic to technology journalism these days, whether print or Web-based. The cutbacks we've encountered at CMP are present everywhere, and it is not a simple story of news transitioning to an all-online format. In fact, it's not even the simple story some grumpy daily journalists would share of all attention turning to blogs that are primarily free, unsponsored, unvetted, and loaded with nothing but gossip.

Truth be told, there are some fine news-oriented blogs out there, hosted by people like Om Malik and Michael Arrington. But to put a finer point on the problem, the biggest traffic seems to be steered to device-fetish blogs, where any thoughtful analysis of the industry is forsaken for starry-eyed obsession with the latest widgets. And formerly news-heavy sites like C|Net end up devoting more and more space to device fetishism.

Fifteen years ago, I joined EE Times, taking a job as business editor. I knew it was a great publication and I vaguely understood that semiconductors and software was fascinating stuff that I should know about. I figured technology was the place to be, and working for EE Times was like covering Hollywood for Daily Variety. What I failed to appreciate at the time was just how much electronics design was about to transform the world and, in the process, me.

The longer I cover the semiconductor industry the more I notice the people who've been around forever as much as I notice the people who are no longer in the industry. Bruce Entin is one of the latter.

Our man Bolaji Ojo wrote a thoughful piece this week about the impact of private equity investors on our industry. Now comes news that makes this trend even more intriguing.