Chip firms collaborate on semiconductor system-on-chips

Five high-profile IT firms have joined forces to push the use of open source software on semiconductor system-on-chips (SoCs).

ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have formed an organisation called Linaro, which will encourage the development of open source projects for use on Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS.

The companies said that they hope to improve the consumer and developer experiences on connected devices, and will begin delivering results later this year.

"The dramatic growth of open source software development can now be seen in internet-based, always-connected mobile and consumer products," said Linaro executive officer Tom Lantzsch.

"Linaro will help accelerate this trend by increasing investment in key open source projects, and providing industry alignment with the community to deliver the best Linux-based products for the benefit of the consumer."

The partnership will provide a base for distributions, and will release new tools including kernel and middleware software. The involvement of five major tech firms will ensure that any resulting software is validated for a wide range of SoCs.

Linaro expects to release its first software and tools by November, along with optimisations for ARM's range of Cortex processors. Updates will then be released every six months.

"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 ARM chief executive Warren East.

"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."