The 2010 ARM Technology Conference (Techcon) is taking place in Santa Clara next week. A large number of companies will be presenting their solutions to support development and optimization of products based on ARM technology, and open source will be discussed in many of these with projects like Linux, Android and development tools. For instance, many of these solutions are using open source to leverage earlier work that ARM has done with the open source community, contributing CPU and architecture support to the upstream Linux kernel and GNU compilation tools ahead of partner silicon platforms being available. One of the most recent illustrations is the contribution of Cortex-A15 CPU support to the Linux kernel as the processor was announced. Linux kernel and GNU development tools are key building blocks to support the development of solutions such as Android, Chrome or Linux distributions, and as such it is essential that ARM support for these is available very early on to Partners and the Community. There are many other projects ARM and Partners are participating in, either directly or indirectly to optimize or develop support for ARM CPU and platforms, with projects such as Mozilla Firefox and Webkit browsers (JIT and SMP optimizations), adding latest architecture support to instrumentation tools like Valgrind, or targeted media acceleration in libraries such as Skia or Cairo with SIMD instructions.
The way ARM approaches open source development is in concert with the open source community and partners. Contributions to respective upstream projects require constant interaction with community members to support the upstream review process. Processes can be very specific to individual projects and may seem quite complex for developers who are not so familiar with open source. Some recent initiatives like Linaro are aimed at providing consolidation points for some key open source projects and components to limit duplication of effort, enabling developers/companies to focus on adding differentiation for their products or projects. In addition to this, there are blogs and online information available from ARM and Partners to help developers make the best of ARM platforms, complementing some of the materials which are presented at developer conferences. This is an ongoing activity though, as ARM and Partners keep developing new technology to enable an increasing number of innovative products!
ARM Techcon Linux, Android and Open Source sessions
Wednesday Nov 10
10:30am - 11:20am [ATC-137] Embedding Linux on ARM with OpenEmbedded
[ATC-142] A Source Based Approach to Embedded Linux Development
11:30am - 12:20pm [ATC-138] Android and RTOS for Medical Applications
[SS-MAR03] Developing for the Plug Computer and Android
3:00pm - 3:50pm [TH-05] Linaro Overview, Community and New Development Platforms
3:30pm - 4:20pm [ATC-140] Android and Linux for Embedded Systems Acceleration
4:30pm - 5:20pm [ATC-141] Building Open-source Applications with the ARM Compiler
[ATC-146] PCD: Process Control Daemon (for Embedded Linux)
Thursday Nov 11
10:30am - 11:20am [ATC-162] Android for ARM and TI-based eBook Development
[SS-ENE01] Rapid Software Development on Heterogeneous ARM + DSP Processors
11:00am - 11:50am [TH-07] ARM Software Optimization
11:30am - 12:20pm [ATC-163] Why Embedded Linux Needs ARM
2:00pm - 2:50pm [ATC-164] VOME - A Fully OpenMAX Complaint Media Framework for Android
3:00pm - 3:50pm [TH-11] Bringing High Performance HTML5.0 to ARM
Linaro will also be hosting a Webinar on Wednesday Nov. 10th 12:00pm PST entitled Linaro 10.11 release and beyond. If you're interested in open source strategies and development or implementing Linux based products, be sure to tune in for this.
Philippe Robin, Director, Open Source, ARM Ltd. Philippe is responsible for Linux and open source activity at ARM Ltd., working with ARM partners and Open Source community members to enable the use of Linux and open source technology with ARM technology and products. He has been involved with the development of operating systems for over 20 years, represents ARM in standards organizations and has published in journals and research reviews.