Yesterday a batch of the most serious companies in and around the cellular chip business, launched Linaro, a company aimed at making it easier to get Linux based devices of all kinds, including handsets, off the ground.
The founding members of Linaro are ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, and the aim is to create a common foundation of tools and software aimed at aligning development for all the Linux offerings on the market, including Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Unbuntu and WebOS.
The big names missing from the list are Qualcomm on one side, always a company that tends to ‘go it alone’ with its innovations, and the grouping of Nokia and Intel, the driving forces behind MeeGo, which have put their weight behind the Nokia owned Qt development system. Though Linaro says that it expects more members to join, and that it is open for more members.
Linaro says it will create new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of SoCs, every six months, aimed at smart phones, tablets, digital televisions, automotive entertainment and enterprise equipment. The first release is due out in November for the latest range of ARM Cortex-A family of processors.
The group says that current wave of “always-connected, always-on” devices require complex SoCs to achieve the performance and low power consumers demand and there needs to be increased investment to address the challenges in developing products for a broad array of semiconductor products from multiple companies.
“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 says it will unite open source engineering resources within its member firms with the broader open source community. Linaro engineers 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.
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.