ARM, Freescale, Samsung, IBM & TI form Linaro

At this year's Computex PC trade show in Taiwan, processor manufacturer ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have teamed up to form a new software engineering company dedicated to enhancing open source for the next generation of always-connected, always-on computing. The non-profit organisation, called Linaro says that it will work to unite "industry leaders to foster innovation in the Linux community through a common foundation of tools and software".

Discussing the new partnership, ARM CEO Warren East said, "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," adding that, "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."

Linaro will work with and invest in various open source projects that can be used by Linux-based distributions including, for example, Android, MeeGo, Ubuntu and WebOS. The organisation will create "new releases of optimised tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of SoCs (System-on-Chip), every six months". Its first first software and tools release is scheduled to arrive in November of this year and will support ARM's latest Cortex-A series processors.

More details about Linaro, including a FAQ page, are available on the organisation's web site and wiki. A list of Commercial Sponsors and its Management Team breakdown are also provided.

See also:

• The need for Linaro, a Linaro blog post.
• ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Form New Company to Speed the Rollout of Linux-Based Devices, Linaro press release.

(crve)