Iris, I found this on Wind & Intel.
Is there a future for Windtel? Part I
September 10, 1999
Tawei Liao
On April 20, 1999, we released our first report on Intel's network strategy [1]. Our conclusion was simple: Intel needs to become the leading component supplier for network equipment manufacturers. Last week our predictions became true. Intel announced its Internet Exchange Architecture (IXA). This architecture "uses an open standards-based design allowing systems designers to add network functionality quickly and cost effectively." [2] In plain simple English it means that Intel wants to do to the network equipment industry what it did to the PC industry: to "commoditize" it.
Since this announcement, we have received many emails from our readers asking us about the role of VxWorks, a RTOS (Real Time Operating System) from WindRiver Systems in IXA and also about the future of Cisco Systems. Will WindRiver become the Microsoft of the network equipment industry? Will Cisco fall like IBM? Will Intel buy WindRiver? We will attempt to answer these questions.
This is the first article of a three part series on Intel and the impact of IXA on the network equipment industry. Part I will examine the role of IXA and WindRiver Systems. Part II will focus on the problems that will arise as industry titans joust for position. And finally in part III we will speculate on possible outcomes to the problems.
IXA and VxWorks
To fully understand the impact of IXA and VxWorks on the network equipment industry, we must go back and look at how the PC industry evolved. In the early days, all computer manufacturers designed their own hardware and wrote their own operating system. Everything was proprietary; no two computers were compatible. The IBM PC changed all that. It was a radically new machine made almost entirely from off-the-shelf components. The microprocessor was from Intel and the operating system from Microsoft. Clone makers only needed to buy the microprocessor, motherboard, hard drive, and a few other components and load an operating system from Microsoft in order to make a computer. This open architecture also allowed third party vendors to make peripherals such as sound cards or printers for the IBM PC. To make a long story short, the clone makers won and the rest is history. The two real winners in this story are Intel, the maker of the microprocessor, and Microsoft, the maker of the operating system.
The current state of the network equipment industry is very similar to the early days of the PC industry. Cisco, 3Com, and nearly every network equipment vendor design their own hardware and write their own software. Everything is proprietary and closed. They do not follow any open standards because there are none. Companies that want to make routers cannot buy off-the-shelf components and slap them together. They need to design many of the hardware components themselves and also write a lot of software to make it all work. Needless to say, this is a very expensive way of doing engineering.
Intel and WindRiver are trying to change all that with IXA and VxWorks [3]. The IXP 1200 network processor, together with VxWorks, allows a company to cut development cost and time. Instead of reinventing the wheel by using custom-built components, engineers can follow Intel's IXA reference design and use the IXP 1200 as a foundation for building their own network equipment. A router can be built around an Intel network processor the same way a PC is built on a motherboard around an Intel microprocessor. IXA gives them a standard to use and follow. The addition of VxWorks, with its plethora of network-related software libraries, will cut time to market down even further. Engineers can simply load VxWorks onto the system and write simple extensions to control their own hardware, much like a program that runs on top of Microsoft Windows today. This is as close to an off-the-shelf solution as one can get.
IXA and VxWorks will have a huge impact on the future of the network equipment industry. It will allow small players to build cost competitive products a lot faster. This will force the big players like Cisco to rethink their strategies for dealing with startups. In the next article, we will examine all the problems that will arise as a result of IXA and VxWorks.
References
[1] T. Liao, "Intel Inside" the Internet. Internet ConneXion, Inc
[2] Intel Press Release
[3] WindRiver Systems Press Release
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