Now, if VxWorks were embedded in all of these chips would this problem of chip communication be alleviated? Is there a compelling and now inevitable (given Wind's dominance) reason to standardize on VxWorks and related Wind products or would standardizing like this not resolve the issue?
I wish I knew the answer to that question. I know diddly about software, and communication at the chip level is way beyond my knowledge.
Here is what I do know:
Wind states that their primary competition comes from in-house systems. They say that their competitive advantage comes from increasing complexity, and increasing time to market.
When I think of in-house systems, I think of the old line manufacturers like GM, Sony, and Boeing, and the diversified chip manufacturers like Motorola, Texas Instruments, Intel and Siemens. There must be some reason they are all major customers of Wind. Then I think of the newer chip manufacturers, like LSI, MMCN, XLNX, PMCS, CNXT, and BRCM. I don't think most of them develop any operating system to go along with their chips, so there is an obvious reason for them to partner with an OS company. There must be some reason they have all chosen to use VxWorks. Next I think of Palm. Why did they need to go to Wind to solve their connectivity problems? There must be some reason. What is the reason that Intel, Infineon and Mips have all established "centers of excellence" with Wind to more closely integrate the chip design and the operating system design. There must be some reason that Wind had 20 design wins for optical switches last quarter. The only reason that I can come up with is that Wind is helping all of these companies get complex products to market faster. There is no other operating system that supports anywhere near as many processors as VxWorks, and the number of different processors most surely will only increase in the future.
Personally, I don't think it is related so much to Wind providing easier communication as it is to the market demanding a standard, and in the absence of one, choosing the industry leader as the de facto standard. I don't think gorilla power has as much to do with the reason the specific company was selected as the fact that it was selected, for whatever reason. Its not just the operating system. Wind has hundreds of companies in its value chain, ready, willing and able to provide whatever hooks, bells and whistles the customer needs to get the product to market.
If you're planning on putting 50% of your portfolio in a single company, you need to do a lot of thinking about what could go wrong. The biggest threat to Wind is generally perceived to be Linux, and I agree with that. Linux has its roots in Unix, and we all know that the phone company used to largely run on Unix (telco engineers help me out here). Linux is a very good operating system for what it does, and you can't beat the price. There is a TON of money being thrown at Linux development from all sides, including from many of Wind's customers and partners. But Linux also has its problems. First, it is not real time. That doesn't mean much for a server, but apparently it means a whole lot for a communications switch. Some people have postulated that real time characteristics become less important as chip speed increases. I don't know whether that is true or not. Wind's current position is that Linux is much closer to in-house than to an off the shelf solution. Linux is only an operating system; it is not (yet) a complete development environment. By virtue of its open source, there is no one company that can control the standards going forward, and it is likely that Linux will fragment over time as different companies modify it.
I like your PS about RCA. My follow up questions would have been "Why are you using VxWorks? and What would you switch to?" There are a lot of companies that provide real time operating systems for certain processors, and most of them would gladly accept an assignment to port to any new processor that someone wanted to pay for. But there is only one leader, and there will only be one gorilla. I think it will be Wind.
John |
