Intel Corp. has acquired Opened Hand, a London-based company which specializes in mobile Linux development and services.

"Opened Hand brings great expertise and technology in the area of user-interaction frameworks, improving Intel's ability to address the unique challenges of enabling cutting edge UIs for these new class of devices," a spokesperson for Intel told ZDNet.co.uk.

Intel will continue to support existing Opened Hand projects, including software library Clutter, used for GUI creation, and Matchbox, an open-source base environment for the X Window System. These projects will become part of the Moblin project.

Opened Hand, which has Nokia Internet Tablets, One Laptop Per Child, Openmoko, and Vernier as clients, will join the Intel Open Source Technology Center.

Intel's smallest chip. Built with the world's smallest transistors.

According to Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney:

"This is our smallest processor built with the world's smallest transistors. The Intel® Atom™ processor is based on an entirely new design, built for low power and designed specifically for a new wave of Mobile Internet Devices and simple, low-cost PC's. This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry."

The newly designed from the ground up, 45nm Intel® Atom™ processors pack an astounding 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm², making them Intel's smallest and lowest power processors.

Intel will start to roll next month its new technology called Remote Wake - the ability for a computer to be turned on from sleep mode remotely. Applications that have already been designed around this technology include PC-based phone service and content delivery.

Remote Wake underscores another facet of computing: the evolution of the PC into a media center. "Intel is smart enough to know which direction the industry is headed," Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, a content delivery company that is partnering with Intel, told TechNewsWorld. "This technology enables the PC to stay in sleep mode until needed, and then it can receive media."

read more ...