Tech Heavies Join Forces for Better Gadgetry Through Linux

Linaro, a nonprofit collaboration of high-tech firms led by ARM, aims to propel Linux further into the consumer gadget space. "We saw an absolute explosion of a demand for smart connected devices that go beyond the smartphone -- from tablets to TVs," said Kerry McGuire, director of strategic marketing for ARM.

A group of high-tech firms, led by ARM (Nasdaq: ARMHY), Freescale Semiconductor, IBM (NYSE: IBM), Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), have formed a nonprofit organization to promote the use of Linux software on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

To that end, the organization, called "Linaro," will develop tools, applications, kernel, graphics and boot codes to help the various Linux-based distributions -- Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS -- work as effectively as possible with the high-performance, low-power processors these devices require.

The first release is planned for November 2010. It will provide performance optimizations for SoC (System-on-Chip) semiconductors based on the ARM Cortex-A processor family.

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