IBM, Samsung and Others Launch Linaro for ARM Chips

ARM, Freescale, Samsung, IBM, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have come together to form not-for-profit software company, Linaro.

Linaro is dedicated to developing Linux software solutions for hardware based on ARM chips, currently widely used in mobile devices and set to feature in upcoming devices from TI and Samsung.

"On the one side you have many chips, and on the other side you have many distributions (software versions)," said Linaro executive Tom Lantzsch.

Linaro's aim is to make sure that the latest software version can be easily ported to the latest silicon.

Lantzsch told Cnet that the company has been gifted "tens of millions of dollars" worth of funding by its founders.

In a statement, the company said: "Linaro will provide a stable and optimized base for distributions and developers by creating new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of (chips), every six months."