Intel, California based chip-making giant, has acquired two software companies during the past one month period in an effort to gain additional expertise in the development of applications that aims at multi-core processors.

Intel has acquired Waterloo-based RapidMind, which provides a development platform that assists software developers to target multi-core processors.

Apart from RapidMind, Intel recently acquired Cilk Arts, which also develops software for multi-core computing.

Both, RapidMind and Cilk are small companies, which employs less than fifty workers.

Earlier in June, Intel purchased a software company called Wind River Systems.

Speaking on the question of acquisition, James Reinders, a big shot at Intel, said, "Over the last few years, there has been a gradual emergence of multicore microprocessors. It's put parallelism in more and more machines."

However, Intel did not disclose the financial details of the acuisitions.

Intel will retain the majority of RapidMind's staff and will go on serving the present customers of RapidMind.

(Quotes Courtesy: Nanotechnology and Computer Hardware expert Mr. Brooke Crothers, former editor at large at CNET's News.com. More details here)