Intel, Wasabi Systems ally on storage

NetBSD vendor Wasabi Systems Inc. this week became the latest beneficiary of Intel Corp.'s largesse.

The company has taken an equity investment from Intel Capital to develop storage and networking products with the large systems manufacturer.

Intel says that Wasabi Systems, who develops NetBSD software, uses a particularly compact operating system with advance networking features, thus making it an excellent platform for embedding in devices such as cell phones, switches and set-top boxes.

Wasabi has supported Intel's XScale architecture in the past. Xscale, for instance, is used in Intel's iSCSI adapters, the PRO/1000T IP Storage Adapter, to assist in offloading TCP/IP onto the adapter'' silicon to make it faster.

Intel and Wasabi will work to optimize NetBSD for iSCSI, jointly develop iSCSI products and create reference platform board packages for future products.

Wasabi's NetBSD distribution is based on the BSD, which allows users to keep some of the code secret or public as they wish. BSD stands for Berkeley Sockets Distribution. A variety of other companies use significant portions of BSD - among them are Apple and Juniper Networks.

Until this time, Wasabi has been operating with $4 million in funding from Praxis Capital Ventures and Himalaya Capital.