Yesterday evening, after writing the previous two articles on the battle between Intel and ARM + NVIDIA for the ultramobile space, I was telling our Linux editor why I think Intel pours so many resources into Moblin and other parts of the Linux ecosystem: they want to keep x86-based Linux well ahead of ARM, because the software stack is critical to making inroads in low-power mobile and embedded applications. But while Moblin might be fine for web tablets and the like, real embedded customers of the sort that Intel would ultimately like to poach from ARM run the VxWorks real-time OS by Wind River. So this morning, Intel has announced that it is going to do with VxWorks what it cannot do with Linux—it's just buying the whole thing.

Intel plans to buy Wind River for a cool $884 million in cash, and it seems likely that it plans to extend their Linux strategy to this new OS. Intel's announcement on the deal emphasizes that Wind River will be run as a subsidiary of Intel, and that "Wind River will continue to develop innovative, commercial-grade software platforms that support multiple hardware architectures that are optimized for the needs of its many embedded and mobile customers." But Intel isn't shy about trumpeting the fact that Wind River will now turn considerable attention to the x86 port of VxWorks.

Though Intel would deny it, because it wants to keep Wind River's existing customer and revenue base intact for as long as it can, the ultimate result of this will be that the future of VxWorks is with x86, and any ARM, MIPS, or PowerPC versions of the OS will be demoted to second-class citizen status.

For those of you not familiar with Wind River's VxWorks, it's a very popular embedded OS that's used in everything from cars and appliances to NASA's Mars rover. As a proprietary OS, it's sort of the Windows of the embedded world as far as reach, though embedded folks will hate that analogy because VxWorks is known for being everything that Windows is not, i.e., lean, mean, and 100 percent bulletproof.

Any way you slice it, this news is a blow to ARM. Intel would probably have just bought ARM if it wouldn't raise all sorts of antitrust flags, but buying Wind River was the second best thing. In this respect, the Intel/VxWorks announcement is almost the mirror image of the ARM/netbook news from yesterday, in that it shows how these two architectures are increasingly coming into direct competition with one another.

Speaking of ARM and OS disappointments, Reuters reports that, "Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system will not run on netbooks powered by ARM chips, Microsoft said on Wednesday, a blow to the British firm's hopes of becoming a big player in the sector." In other news, the fact that Microsoft will not give me a gold-plated bust of Bill Gates for my office is a blow to my hopes of becoming a guy with a gold-plated bust of Bill Gates in his office. Seriously, this Win7/ARM proposal was a bad idea, so it can't be a blow to anyone that Microsoft declined to waste its time on it.