For Some Reason Google Bought Linux Company PeakStream

Seemingly out of left field, Google has bought PeakStream, the two-year-old start-up whose young tools make it easier to program multi-core processors by kinda doing the parallelizing for you if you write to its APIs. Then you can run the program on a variety of chips. PeakStream has been out talking to just about everybody the last few months.

Apparently Google’s idea is to use the widgetry exclusively in-house to boost server performance. It’s hard to tell. All Google’s saying is that “We believe the PeakStream team’s broad technical expertise can help build products and features that will benefit our users. We look forward to providing them with additional resources as they continue developing high-performance applications for modern multi-core systems.”

Can swing either way, right?

Anyway, PeakStream is no longer selling its platform. In fact, its whole site has disappeared into the ether.
The news may or may not come as a blow to AMD, because PeakStream has been focused on ATI chips and its disappearance inside the yawning Googleplex could make things more challenging for the rest of the market, particularly the financial services, medical imaging, defense and oil and gas folks it was aimed at.

On the other hand, it may be good for AMD if Google starts buying ATI GPUs by the boatload to rebuild its vast armada of servers. At least that’s what the Wall Street Journal suggested.

Read more at Linux-sys-con.com