Microsoft Knows Exactly Where Intel's Future Is

This week, Microsoft researcher Doug Burger received more than his usual share of email. On Monday, Intel told the world it was spending $16.7 billion in cash to acquire a company called Altera. And perhaps more than anyone, Burger understands why this deal makes sense for the world's largest chip maker. At Microsoft, he cooked up a new way of powering the company's Bing search engine using the low-power programmable chips sold by Altera, pairing them with traditional microprocessors from Intel. Asked how he views the Intel acquisition, Burger is understandably coy.