ntel has worked hard and spent a lot of money over the years to shape its image: it is the company that celebrates its quest to make computer chips ever smaller, faster, and cheaper with a quick five-note jingle at the end of its commercials.
But as Intel tries to expand beyond the personal-computer chip business, it is changing in subtle ways. For the first time, its long unheralded software developers, more than 3,000 of them, have stolen some of the spotlight from its hardware engineers. These programmers find themselves at the center of Intel's forays into areas like mobile phones and video games.
The most attention-grabbing element of Intel's software push is a version of the open-source Linux operating system called Moblin. It represents a direct assault on the Windows franchise of Microsoft, Intel's longtime partner.
"This is a very determined, risky effort on Intel's part," said Mark Shuttleworth, the chief executive of Canonical, which makes another version of Linux called Ubuntu.
The Moblin software resembles Windows or Apple's Mac OS X to a degree, handling the basic functions of running a computer. But it has a few twists that Intel says make it better suited for small mobile devices.
For example, Moblin fires up and reaches the Internet in about seven seconds, then displays a novel type of start-up screen. People will find their appointments listed on one side of the screen, along with their favorite programs. But the bulk of the screen is taken up by cartoonish icons that show things like social-networking updates from friends, photos, and recently used documents.
With animated icons and other quirky bits and pieces, Moblin looks like a fresh take on the operating system. Some companies hope it will give Microsoft a strong challenge in the market for the small, cheap laptops commonly known as Netbooks. A polished second version of the software, which is in trials, should start appearing on a variety of Netbooks this summer.
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