VxWorks is the core of IOS-KR. That sort of thing is nice to have in house

I think you mean "QNX's Neutrino" and "IOS-XR", so er... no. VxWorks has plenty of successful implementations, but that isn't one of them.

There's an awful lot of stuff out there with an awful lot of investment behind it that uses VxWorks on chips that aren't from Intel. They're using ARM and PowerPC, even 68000! And those things and their developers with decades of ecosystem behind them aren't about to switch to an Intel chip just because VxWorks has been bought, even if Intel withdraw VxWorks-PowerPC, VxWorks-ARM, etc.

If Intel do withdraw that support I expect a lot of things will migrate to Greenhill's Integrity OS. It's not too dissimilar to VxWorks, and does support all those other CPUs that don't belong to Intel.

Is this all a symptom of Intel having ditched XScale, regretting it, not admitting the mistake, trying to cover it up with their creation of Atom, realising that Atom is a mistake too, and trying to cover that up by buying a key OS vendor with a view to force developers on to Atom? They'll have to buy all the other real time OSes too, and that'll look anti-competitive...

Intel have a lot of work to do to make x86 fit the same niches as ARM and PowerPC. Atom doesn't even come close.

I'm not sure how one paints Intel as "financially struggling". it's maintained profitibility, has cash in the bank, and is continuing to do research.

> "Wind River is buying out your RTOS vendor"

Yes, I remember that too. Still, at least they weren't saying that you had to change processor too (at least not very much).