Wind River Systems, a maker of software that powers many of the lesser-known types of computing devices hidden in the fabric of the high-tech world, has won approval to have its operating system used in Formula One race cars.
I"ve never heard of "em, but it does seem to be quite a coup. :)
The company will announce Wednesday that the Federation Internationale de L"Automobile (FIA), which governs Formula One and other auto racing, approved Wind River"s VxWorks operating system. Several teams, including Ferrari, Renault, Toyota and Minardi are using the software in their cars, Wind River plans to announce.
The deal means some much-needed revenue for Wind River, the largest maker of "embedded" software, which is used to run everything from slot machines to airplane radar to microwave ovens to network modems.
In contrast to the desktop marketplace, though, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft"s Windows OS, embedded computing systems aren"t effectively standardized on one or two operating systems. That leaves room for Wind River and others to increase sales if they can convince customers to switch from their own custom operating systems.