>That statment in bold has me worried more then anything, almost as much as
>BIOS vendors doing I2O?
I don't share your fear of BIOS companies. Am I missing something?
Let me correct a statement I made a while back about RTOS companies dealings with BIOS companies. I said MWAR's dealt with SYSF re wireless and portable devices. To be specific, MWAR obtained the ability to integrate PC-Card into their OS, which might be used with more than just wireless devices (although PC-Card is most commonly associated with portable devices).
Similarly, you can expect that RTOS companies will work with BIOS companies to bring in FireWire and USB.
Going the other way, the BIOS companies will need to guarantee that their system software is compatible with I2O, that it is "I2O Ready". Remember, legacy I/O will continue to work with I2O enabled systems, but all I/O will be improved if advantage is taken of I2O when it exists. This means all the BIOS companies will have to acquire, or maybe they already have, Tornado for IxWorks in order to upgrade their software. But I don't see this as any kind of threat to WIND. In fact, the only threat would be if they decided to ignore I2O.
To elaborate, I don't see the BIOS companies wanting to duplicate IxWorks functionality, since I don't think of them having full OS expertise. Although, I suppose some might try to emulate portions of I2O functionality in software for the PC, just to take advantage of I2O I/O abstractions without having to add hardware. This would be like having a cheap PC with floating point emulated in software. I doubt if WIND would want to bother supplying an I2O emulation library for PCs, but conceivably BIOS companies might take to the idea.
Allen |
