Stefan Mileschin

Acquired Linutronix

Chipzilla has written a cheque for Linutronix to ramp up its investment in Linux/open-source engineering.

For those not in the know, Linutronix is a German-based Linux consulting firm focused on embedded Linux and real-time computing.

It is clever for Chipzilla as industrial applications are set to make increasing use of low-latency communication between controllers, sensors, robots and tooling, and other equipment.

Intel gets its claws on the PREEMPT_RT patch set, which when applied and enabled makes the Linux kernel as preemptible as possible. This in turn lowers internal latencies, which is useful for those scheduling time-sensitive software threads to complete within a given deadline (using the deadline scheduler). This in turn is useful for ensuring, for example, incoming data is processed reliably within a tight time-frame.

Intel's acquisition of Linutronix appears to be primarily focused as an acqui-hire with getting Linutronix's alented staff at Intel. Among the prominent Linutronix engineers is their CTO Thomas Gleixner as a longtime kernel maintainer and important contributor on the x86 side, including with Linux's CPU security mitigations and perhaps most notably for the real-time (PREEMPT_RT) work.

https://fudzilla.com/news/pc-hardwar...s-up-a-penguin