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Cilk

Intel acquires two software firms

Intel has quietly snapped up two software companies in the last 30 days with aim of boosting development of applications that take better advantage of chips with more than one processing core.

In a company blog, the chipmaker indicated the acquisition of Cilk at the end of last month and then Rapidmind earlier this week. Both are small companies that employ under 50 people. The acquisitions follow the purchase of software company Wind River Systems in June.

"Over the last few years, there has been a gradual emergence of multicore microprocessors. It's put parallelism in more and more … Read more

Open-source traffic is way up in 2008

Just when I think we've tapped out all possible open-source business opportunities, I hear of another open-source start-up. Or several.

This past week I've heard of a few new ones, or of others that have been around for a while but have yet to take venture money. Reductive Labs (puppet project), Cilk Arts, RiverMuse, and Watircraft are a few that I can mention publicly, but there are several more that are still in stealth. In two cases, a business hasn't been formed but some very interesting ideas are being kicked around.

Open-source venture investing may be down this past quarter, … Read more