Ashlee Vance over at The Register has some interesting analysis on the acquisition of PeakStream and its implications for parallel code development
Google’s orgiastic, eccentric acquisition of start-up PeakStream must scare the major players in the server processor and hardware universe. An ad broker has eaten a potentially super-valuable, industry-wide asset with no greater ambition than self-gratification in mind. As a result, high-end server applications could hobble along for years to come.
Our most recent chats with relevant parties confirm that Google has no intentions of selling the PeakStream tools to chip, server or software makers. …In addition, we’re hearing that Google has little more than passing interest in crafting code to run on GPGPUs – the most immediate promise of an independent PeakStream’s technology. Rather, Google ate up the PeakStream talent to develop better multi-threaded code capable of traversing x86 chips.
This one is hard to excerpt; you should just go read the whole thing and then decide for yourself.
Thank you for interesting link, often I’ve read only “good things” about Google, so the alternative view is always interesting.
Alexander: in this case I think Google is acting in its own self interest. I don’t think they’re out to do harm to the industry; rather I think they’re just out to help themselves without consideration of the possible negative impact.