Ot: ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Form New Company to Speed the Rollout of Linux-Based Devices (fwd)

[Karen Lewellen]

Hi,
given the brilliant and innovative minds on these lists, I share in case 
some want to get in on the ground floor of these efforts.
Karen


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:38:37 -0700

ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Form New 
Company to Speed the Rollout of Linux-Based Devices

http://www.linaro.org/arm-freescale-ibm-samsung-st-ericsson-and-texas-instruments-form-new-company-to-speed-the-rollout-of-linux-based-devices/

Linaro unites industry leaders to foster innovation in the Linux® community 
through a common foundation of tools and software
ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have created 
the not-for-profit company, Linaro, committed to providing new resources and 
industry alignment for open source software developers using Linux on the 
world’s most sophisticated semiconductor System-on-Chips (SoCs).
Linaro will invest resources in open source projects that can then be used by 
Linux-based distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS.
Linaro will provide a stable and optimized base for distributions and 
developers by creating new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware 
software validated for a wide range of SoCs, every six months.
Linaro's base of software and tools will be applicable to a wide range of 
markets, helping reduce time-to-market for products such as smart phones, 
tablets, digital televisions, automotive entertainment and enterprise 
equipment.
Linaro's first software and tools release is due out in November 2010, and will 
provide optimizations for the latest range of ARM® Cortex™-A family of 
processors.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - June 3 2010 - ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, 
ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), today announced the 
formation of Linaro, a not-for-profit open source software engineering company 
dedicated to enhancing open source innovation for the next wave of 
always-connected, always-on computing. Linaro’s work will help developers and 
manufacturers provide consumers with more choice, more responsive devices and 
more diverse applications on Linux-based systems.

Linaro aligns the expertise of industry-leading electronics companies to 
accelerate innovation among Linux developers on the most advanced semiconductor 
SoCs (System-on-Chip). The current wave of "always-connected, always-on" 
devices requires complex SoCs to achieve the performance and low power 
consumers demand. Linaro was formed to increase investment in open source, 
address the challenges in developing products for sophisticated consumer 
markets and provide the support of a broad array of semiconductor products from 
multiple companies. By providing the common foundations of tools and software 
for other distributions and stacks to build upon, Linaro enables greater 
operational efficiency for the electronics industry.

Background

Traditionally, the Linux and open-source software communities focused on 
solving the software problems of enterprise and computing markets with a 
limited choice of processor platforms. The open source community is 
transitioning to create advanced Web-centric consumer devices using high 
profile open source based distributions and a wide range of high-performance, 
low-power ARM®-based SoCs. Linaro will make it easier and quicker to develop 
advanced products with these high profile distributions by creating software 
commonality across semiconductor SoCs, from multiple companies

Consumer Benefits

In addition to providing a focal point for open source software developers, 
consumers will benefit by the formation of Linaro. Linaro’s outputs will 
accelerate the abundance of new consumer products that use Linux-based 
distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS in conjunction 
with advanced semiconductor SoCs to provide the new features consumers desire 
at the lowest possible power consumption.

"The dramatic growth of open source software development can now be seen in 
internet-based, always-connected mobile and consumer products," said Tom 
Lantzsch, executive officer, Linaro. "Linaro will help accelerate this trend 
further by increasing investment on key open source projects and providing 
industry alignment with the community to deliver the best Linux-based products 
for the benefit of the consumer."

Linaro Software and Tools

Linaro will work with the growing number of Linux distributions to create 
regular releases of optimized tools and foundation software that can be used 
widely by the industry, increasing compatibility across semiconductors from 
multiple suppliers. As a result, Linaro's resources and open source solutions 
will allow device manufacturers to speed up development time, improve 
performance and reduce engineering time spent on non-differentiating, low-level 
software. Linux distributions, open source and proprietary software projects 
will benefit from Linaro's investment, with more stable code becoming widely 
available as a common base for innovation.

To further its mission, Linaro aims to unite the open source engineering 
resources within its member firms with the broad open source community. Linaro 
engineers, leveraging their extensive embedded knowledge, will contribute to a 
wide range of open source projects covering areas such as tools, kernel, 
graphics and boot code. Linaro intends to work in partnership with the Linux 
Foundation to align on core operating principles.

The company's first release is planned for November 2010 and will provide 
performance optimizations for SoCs based on the ARM Cortex™-A processor family.

In addition to ARM and IBM, four of the world's leading application processor 
companies, Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, will align 
open source engineering efforts within Linaro.

Linaro is a growing organization with additional partners expected to join, 
thus expanding the range of expertise that is brought to the open source 
community. Companies interested in joining are invited to discuss membership 
with Linaro executives. For more information on the company and future access 
to software and tools, visit www.linaro.org
Founding Member quotes

"ARM and our partners have a long history of working with, and supporting, open 
source software development for complex SoCs based on the ARM architecture," 
said Warren East, ARM CEO. "As a founding member of Linaro, we are working 
together with the broader open source community to accelerate innovation for 
the next generation of computing, focusing on delivering a rich connected 
experience across the diversity of devices in our daily lives."

"Freescale is taking a leadership position in shaping the future of consumer 
electronics by enabling entirely new categories of smart mobile devices based 
on processors," said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of 
Freescale's Networking and Multimedia Group. "Linaro represents an important 
step forward in developing the ecosystem for these smart mobile devices through 
dramatically speeding and simplifying software development cycles and 
leveraging the power and strength of the open source community."

"IBM believes that leadership with Linux solutions begins with effective 
collaboration in the community, and IBM's ten year history of working with the 
Linux community has resulted in a strong, mutually beneficial relationship," 
said Daniel Frye, vice president, open systems development, IBM. "IBM's ongoing 
collaboration has contributed to the widespread adoption of Linux throughout 
the data center. We are strong proponents of working with partners such as ARM 
to further our commitment, ensuring Embedded Linux is the leading platform for 
innovation in the mobile and consumer electronics markets."

"Samsung is an industry leader in high performance, low power application 
processors for mobile handset and other consumer devices. We fully appreciate 
the significance of having an optimized Linux software foundation and tools for 
our ARM CPU core base products, to support our customers' needs with high 
quality solutions," said Yiwan Wong, vice president, System LSI marketing, 
Samsung Electronics. "We are pleased to join Linaro as a foundation member and 
work together with ARM to serve the interests of our customers."

"Open source has become an engine for innovation in the smart phone and 
consumer electronics market," said Teppo Hemia, vice president, 3G Multimedia 
Platforms Business Unit of ST-Ericsson." Being an active contributor in the 
open source community, we are excited to be one of the founding members of 
Linaro and expect our combined efforts to accelerate the development of 
Linux-based devices."

"Linaro is intently focused on delivering critical open source components to 
enable developers building on ARM-based processors. An important element of 
that delivery is a more complete, higher quality development toolset that 
increases performance. In our leadership role, TI will support Linaro's efforts 
by leveraging our open source expertise--evidenced by our participation in 
Linux kernel enhancement submissions and our support of popular industry 
development boards," said Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president and general manager, 
OMAP Platform Business Unit, TI.
Industry quotes

"The existence of Linaro will significantly simplify the process of making 
Linux-based consumer devices available to market," said Jane Silber, CEO of 
Canonical. "By standardising many of the core software components, companies 
can focus on creating great user experiences on embedded devices through to 
smart phones. Canonical is delighted to participate in what will be a 
significant driver of the success of Linux on ARM, in the consumer electronics 
market."

"We welcome the launch of Linaro as a new industry organisation with similar 
values and a complementary focus to LiMo Foundation," said Morgan Gillis, 
executive director of LiMo Foundation. "We look forward to working 
collaboratively with Linaro to deliver greater efficiency within the mobile 
Linux value system."

"The Linux Foundation is happy to see ARM and Linaro increase their investment 
in Linux," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. "We are 
supportive of any investment that contributes to the mainline kernel and the 
many upstream open source projects that make up Linux based operating systems 
today."
Linaro Press Contacts

Racepoint Group - Europe
Kersti Klami
Tel: +44(0)7891 796 473
kersti.klami at racepointgroup.com

Racepoint Group – U.S.
Leslie Clavin
Tel: +1 (415)694-6717
lclavin at racepointgroup.com

Candice Huang
Tel: +1 (415) 694-6703
chuang at racepointgroup.com
About Linaro

Linaro™ is a Not-For-Profit (NFP) software engineering company that works with 
the open source community to make it easier and faster to develop open source 
based devices. Linaro has the aim of investing new resources and aligning 
efforts from the industry to continuously improve and optimize open source 
software and tools on the ARM architecture with the goal of accelerating 
industry innovation.

www.linaro.org