Intel and the Ecosystem

The Intel Software and Services Group

A wide range of technology experts contribute to Intel’s success. Here, we meet some of those teams and explain the part they play in enabling the PC industry. First up is the Intel Software and Services Group. Wolfgang Petersen, Director of Intel’s Developer Relation Division (DRD) EMEA, provides an overview of the organisation.

Although best known as a leader in the computer hardware industry, Intel is also deeply involved in delivering software, development tools and solutions. For more than 25 years Intel has worked with leading operating system and independent software vendors to ensure a variety of software is enabled to run on Intel® Architecture in order to underpin technology advancements essential to daily life.

Lead by Renee James, Intel's Software and Services Group (SSG) employs thousands of software-focused professionals focusing on the design, engineering and diffusion of PC software technologies. measured by engineering staff, if SSG were an independent software company, it would be among the world’s top ten.

SSG works on a broad range of software-related areas. Its priorities in 2009 include: visual computing; multi-core software design (parallelism); Intel’s move into new growth areas, such as hand-held/mobile Internet devices (MIDs), smartphones, netbooks and CE/embedded devices; virtualisation; manageability; and worldwide academic and developer training.

Enabling: SSG engages with more than 17,000 independent software vendors worldwide through a framework for collaborative solution development. Furthermore, Intel engages with more than 400,000 individual software developers through an online network offering tools, resources and expertise. To help prepare the next generation of software developers, SSG has provided 1,000 higher education institutions with parallel programming and visual computing curricula, developer tools, training and research to enhance software education around the world. SSG’s enabling efforts encourage software innovation and accelerate the activation of Intel technologies throughout the software community.

Products, Programs and Services: SSG offers software tools that help engineers accelerate the development of optimised and scalable multithreaded applications to get the most out of Intel’s multi-core processors. Thousands of developers use Intel® Software Development Products, including compilers, debuggers and libraries. Intel® Parallel Studio is a new line of software tools to enable Windows developers to adopt parallelism for multi-core processors.

SSG software services include Intel® Business Exchange, an online storefront to offer a one-stop shopping experience for small- and medium-sized businesses. The Intel® Certified Solutions Program helps software vendors deliver high quality solutions certified to meet rigorous standards for security, interoperability and maintainability, and optimised for Intel technologies.

Software Infrastructure: To build a foundation for robust solutions and industry innovation, SSG works with the software community in setting standards, establishing representative industry benchmarks and participating in community projects. Working with middleware and operating system vendors, SSG helps them take advantage of the latest Intel technology and features. SSG links the software community with Intel’s processor development process. It characterises software behaviour and anticipates future software needs to define requirements for Intel silicon and architecture roadmaps.

Recent Announcements

June 23, 2009, Intel and Nokia announce strategic relationship to shape next era of mobile computing innovation: Intel and Nokia announced a long-term relationship to develop a new class of Intel® Architecture-based mobile computing device and chipset architectures. The agreement includes technology development and cooperation in several open source software initiatives in order to develop common technologies for use in the Moblin and Maemo platform projects, which will deliver Linux-based operating systems for these future mobile computing devices.

June 4, 2009, Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems: Intel entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Wind River Systems Inc. a leading software vendor in embedded devices. Wind River will become part of Intel's strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices.

June 2, 2009, Moblin Gains Momentum at Computex : Intel announced that multiple OSVs, ISVs and OEMs used the backdrop of Computex to pledge their support for Moblin, an open source Linux operating system project that enables rich Internet experiences on Intel® Atom™ processor-based netbooks and other mobile systems.