Klein was talking to EE Times during a whirlwind tour of Wind River facilities globally following the closure of the deal that sees the operating system and tool developer company becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel in the processor giant's Software and Services Group.

The move made quite a stir when it was announced earlier this year after what Klein described as "a year-long courtship."

"Perhaps the most important thing from a strategic point of view has been to ensure that we remain and are seen as an independent unit within the Intel set-up," said Klein.

Wind River President Ken Klein

That is because "one of the main concerns that has been raised is our commitment to non-Intel silicon. Ironically, with the investment from Intel, we have managed to increase engagements with existing partners such as Freescale, NEC, RMI and Cavium. I think we have proven already our commitment to silicon neutrality," said Klein.

The big picture strategy, Klein asserts, is to build a silicon neutral software franchise within Intel . "Our model is IBM, which typically generates 20 percent of its revenues but 40 percent of its profits from software."

The "shared vision" is that the Software and Services division, which has been a cost centre and enabling centre within Intel shifts to becoming a profit centre. "We will be working on more joint projects, but more importantly, we will help Intel commercialize and monetize its investments in software."

Klein added the benefits of the deal are already coming through on the bottom line. "We get access to Intel's amazing channels, reach, resources, brand, all of which leads to the possibility for much larger value transactions and engagements as customers have more confidence in working with us."

And the driver for Intel? "Clearly, they will be able to optimize their silicon for our software. While there have been valuable partnerships between us in the past, as separate, independent companies we could not have done that in any meaningful way. And we will most definitely be able to help them in their strategy to diversify away from the core PC processor business and into the embedded and mobile space."

On the business side, Klein said the company is seeing significant deals coming through in the mobile and automotive segments, as well as in aerospace and defense. However, networking is still "work in progress."

With this progress and these new opportunities, "and as we consummate the relationship, I can see us doing some hiring of engineering talent, especially in the areas of mobile and automotive."

And, while it is "way too soon to declare the downturn over, I see a thaw, we are coming out of the deep freeze, and customers are beginning to spend."

Importance of Multicore
"We were, and are early leaders in developing and providing software for multicore and saw it could represent and inflection point. But it still early days and will clearly work very closely with Intel in this area, who are also a significant player already, for instance with their Nehalem processor. Which is not to say we will not continue to work with existing partners in multicore for embedded applications, people like Freescale, Cavium, Texas Instruments and RMI," said Klein.

He added Wind River does not only provide a hypervisor for multicore, but complete solutions, including run time tools, the VxWorks RTOS, "and perhaps most importantly, the tools for multicore debugging and performance analysis. It is a huge opportunity."

"For quite a while now, it seems silicon vendors have done just about enough in software development to win a socket. With the need for integrated solutions, that is just not good enough. A joint approach is crucial, and the deal with Intel plays into that perfectly, even though we will continue to take an open or agnostic OS approach."

Mobile, Embedded Linux and Related Links

Klein stresses Wind River has a three-pronged approach to the mobile and embedded Linux sectors: The Open Handset Alliance's Android work, LiMo and Intel's Linux-based Moblin strategy, which, he stresses, is coming on strong.

"Our role has been, and will now be even more pertinently, to commercialize Moblin, make sure it gets into real devices and that it has lots of application support behind it via third party developers. We demonstrated how this can be achieved at the recent Intel Developers Forum with an MID (Mobile Internet Device) where we had a significant input into the prototype product's graphics and interface capabilities."

Klein added he is slightly disappointed at the pace of progress in adoption of LiMo based phones, despite the recent breakthrough at Vodafone, but excited by the commitment of Intel to the Linux OS and supporting multiple versions of the open source OS as a means to play in the whole embedded Linux segment as this migrates into other end user sectors such as set-top boxes, automotive and even aerospace and defense.

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