Linaro completes first year with demonstrations of Linaro Evaluation Builds for Android and Ubuntu and introduction of new partner program

Milestone highlights Linaro delivering on its promise to make it easier and quicker to develop open source products

CAMBRIDGE, UK- May 27, 2011- Linaro, a not-for-profit open source software engineering company, is marking its first anniversary with demonstrations of the latest open source software running on its members' hardware at Linaro Developer Summit (LDS) and Computex. The company also announced Linaro Partner Program, an initiative designed to help companies and organizations get involved with Linaro's engineering effort.

Linaro was launched at Computex in 2010 by ARM, IBM, Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and TI with the mission to create an open source engineering organization that provides aligned engineering and investment into open source projects to reduce fragmentation, increase optimization and make it easier for OEMs and ODMs to develop Linux-based products.

Key milestones:

• In the first year, Linaro has built a team of more than 100 talented open source developers that have worked on the open source Linux platform on member chips and delivered code upstream that benefits all Linux-based distributions.
• The latest tools, code and optimizations have been used to create Linaro Evaluation Builds for Android and Ubuntu, making it easier for device manufacturers to use Linaro's engineering.
• To help device makers get to market more quickly, Linaro has focused on delivering product quality software and has created the Linaro Automated Validation Architecture (LAVA) platform which runs on a test farm of members' low-cost boards.

The demonstrations at LDS showcased the Android and Ubuntu Linaro Evaluation Builds for the first time and will be extended further at Computex to include new hardware that will be launched at the show. To follow Linaro's engineering progress, an up-to-date status report can be found at http://status.linaro.org

"The demonstration of Android and Ubuntu Linaro Evaluation Builds and the development of the validation test farm are tangible proof points of the progress Linaro has made on delivering on its mission," said George Grey, Chief Executive Officer of Linaro. "We have delivered consolidation and performance features upstream, worked with our members on support for their latest SoCs, created optimized implementations of popular distributions and focused on the development and testing of product quality software for the benefit of our members."

Linaro Partner Program

Linaro also announced today the Linaro Partner Program, which is designed to enable companies and organizations to get involved with Linaro's engineering team. The Linaro Partner Program will enable ISVs, software service providers and device manufacturers the ability to embed engineers in Linaro and work together on projects of common interest. This alignment with Linaro will be beneficial to both sides, extending the engineering effort available to Linaro and enabling the sponsoring companies to work with a larger team and build profitable businesses around Linaro's roadmap.

"A year ago, Linaro was formed to enhance open source innovation for the next wave of always-connected, always-on computing," said Chief Operations Officer Stephen Doel. "Today, as we turn 1 year old, we are pleased to share our major achievements as we announce Linaro's Partner Program that will continue to accelerate the depth of engagement from electronics companies and encourage continuous involvement from the wider community."

At launch, the Linaro Partner Program includes Thundersoft, Canonical, Mentor Graphics, Genesi and Collabora. Companies interested in aligning with Linaro and joining the Linaro Partner Program should contact the management team. 

Linaro Founding Member Quotes

"Over the last year, Linaro has succeeded by helping make it easier and quicker to bring open source based devices to market," said James McNiven, vice president of Software Alliances of ARM. "Linaro has demonstrated the efficiencies that can be achieved by adopting a coordinated approach to open source and working closely with the ARM Partner community."

"Linaro in conjunction with its other partners of which IBM is one, has been building out a comprehensive ecosystem to enable developers to deliver next-generation software for the mobile segment," said Mark Ireland, vice president of IBM Semiconductor Products & Services and Linaro club director. "Advanced silicon process technology for low power system-on-a-chip designs and software are being used to create solutions optimized for the ARM architecture through the IBM Process Technology alliance."

"At TI, we strive to create innovative technologies that revolutionize the way people interact with each other and the outside world," said Ari Rauch, senior director of Software and System Engineering, OMAP Products, Wireless Business Unit at TI. "With this pursuit in mind, we are extremely proud to be a part of the Linaro team, and we congratulate the organization on this one-year milestone. We look forward to many more years to come, as we work together to unleash new successes in the Embedded Linux community via proven ARM-based architectures, including TI's OMAPTM processors."

"Samsung has been putting much effort on delivering optimized software for ARM Linux-based developers as a member of Linaro since its launching in 2010," said Youngki Chung, vice president of Software Solution Development Team, System LSI Division at Samsung Electronics. "We are pleased with Linaro's achievements of consolidated software and environments and believe that our customers and the open source community will experience the benefits of acceleration in designing their products through the innovative Exynos platform."

"As a member, we are thrilled to see the great achievements of Linaro after just one year of operations," said Teppo Hemia, vice president and head of the Application Engine and Platform Business Unit of ST-Ericsson. "By working in a true open source way, Linaro has made impressive enhancements to the ARM Linux code base which will significantly reduce time to market and investment for OEMs and ODMs. ST-Ericsson is a strong supporter of this approach and has recently, together with partners, launched the Igloo Community and Snowball board as an open source development platform which will fully benefit from the work of Linaro."

"Linaro is delivering on the goal of quickening time to market for our i.MX processors," said Glen Burchers, consumer and industrial segment marketing director for Freescale Semiconductor. "Our customers now have confidence that the Linux mainline kernel is up to date with the latest Freescale code submissions."

Linaro Partner Quotes

"ThunderSoft is pleased to see many common system requirements being addressed in Linaro project. By joining the Linaro Partner Program, ThunderSoft is better armed to deliver the ARM-based software solution to our customers more solidly and more efficiently," said Duan ZhiQiang, chief technology officer of Thundersoft.

"Linaro is essential to the continued expansion of open source software on the ARM architecture. As a member of the Linaro Partner Program, we ensure it's quick and easy to develop and use the best open source technologies on ARM. We're pleased to be working with Linaro ensuring great products can be built using Linaro technologies in Ubuntu," said Steve George, vice president of Business Development at Canonical.

"Linaro is an innovative model for advancing open source technology on the ARM architecture," said Glenn Perry, general manager of the Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. "CodeSourcery, which Mentor Graphics acquired in November 2010, was chosen by Linaro at its inception to assist in developing the GNU toolchain.  We look forward to expanding our relationship with Linaro as we pursue our goal of developing products that simplify and accelerate embedded Linux development."

"In its first year, Linaro has proven to be a dynamic and progressive organization. We are confident that Linaro will contribute significantly to the ARM ecosystem in the years to come and we look forward to being involved," said Raquel Velasco, chairman of Genesi.

"Linaro's focus on delivering improvements upstream perfectly complements Collabora's emphasis on the commercial benefits of effective open source participation," says Robert McQueen, chief technology officer and co-founder of Collabora. "We're really pleased to align our R&D investment with Linaro's goals and help them build on the progress they've made in the past year."

For more information on the company, access to software and tools, and information on the community and open engineering, visit www.linaro.org

About Linaro

Linaro is a Not-For-Profit 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