Actions Technology invests in enabling the open source development community with the development of a new cost-effective Arm 64-bit development board
HONG KONG, China; 9 FEBRUARY 2015
Linaro Ltd, the not-for-profit engineering organization developing open source software for the Arm® architecture, today at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2015 announced that leading Chinese fabless semiconductor company Actions Technology (Zhuhai), a wholly owned subsidiary of Actions Semiconductor Co., Ltd (NASDAQ: ACTS), has joined Linaro as a founding member of the new Linaro Community Boards Group (LCG).
The LCG has been formed to support the new 96Boards initiative. 96Boards is the first open hardware specification that provides a platform for the delivery of compatible low-cost, small footprint 32-bit and 64-bit Cortex-A boards. Standardized expansion buses for peripheral I/O, display and cameras allow the hardware ecosystem to develop a range of compatible add-on products that will work on multiple vendor’s 96Boards products over the lifetime of the platform. The LCG Steering Committee will manage the evolution of the 96Boards open specifications and the development of the 96Boards community. The 96Boards website provides software downloads and updates, information on compatible products, and forums for software developers, makers and OEMs to get community software support and downloads for all 96Boards products.
“Reducing the cost of access to the latest Arm 64-bit hardware means more developers will be working on the 64-bit Arm ecosystem. This will result in accelerated innovation and new, high quality software solutions. With Actions Technology’s deep rooted knowledge in building highly effective systems at competitive prices, we expect Actions’ 64-bit 96Boards product will be widely utilized by developers working with Linaro” said Steve Taylor, Director of the 96Boards program. “We warmly welcome Actions as a member of Linaro and look forward to the open source community developing on their hardware platforms.”
Actions Technology has joined the LCG to combine its low-cost design and manufacturing experience with Linaro’s software expertise to produce the most cost-effective development platform for a broad range of software developers, from professional developers in large corporations to individual hobbyists and makers. This new platform is expected to be available in the second quarter of this year and is based around its new Falcon Series product family, the S900. This SoC is a new generation, ultra-high performance solution featuring a quad-core Arm® Cortex-A53 CPU and a high performance Rogue Series G6230 GPU from Imagination Technologies.
“From mobile devices to the digital home, the electronics industry has been undergoing dramatic change, with a mass migration from single-core to dual-core to quad-core chipsets over the span of just a few years and the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture for smart phones and tablets has accelerated dramatically in 2014,” said Dr. Zhenyu Zhou, President of Actions Technology. “The 64-bit revolution is underway and we are confident that our efforts in the Open Development Platform such as 96Boards will ensure all developers to have most cost-effective and best technology access to the latest 64-bit Arm architecture to accelerate device innovation for all types of connected products, from smartphones, Android tablets and OTT set-top boxes to wearables and a range of new IoT solutions.”
About Linaro
Linaro is the place where engineers from the world’s leading technology companies define the future of Linux on Arm. The company is a not-for-profit engineering organization with over 150 engineers working on consolidating and optimizing open source software for the Arm architecture, including developer tools, the Linux kernel, Arm power management, and other software infrastructure. Linaro is distribution neutral: it wants to provide the best software foundations to everyone by working upstream, and to reduce non-differentiating and costly low level fragmentation. The effectiveness of the Linaro approach has been demonstrated by Linaro’s growing membership, and by Linaro consistently being listed as one of the top five company contributors to Linux kernels since 3.10.
To ensure commercial quality software, Linaro’s work includes comprehensive test and validation on member hardware platforms. The full scope of Linaro’s engineering work is open to all online. To find out more, please visit .
About Actions Technology (Zhuhai)
Actions Technology focuses on solutions for smart handheld and smart home devices. Its main products are tablet, over-the-Top (“OTT”) set-top boxes and Bluetooth® wireless technology boombox solutions, along with total product and technology solutions based on the Android platform. These products feature high performance, low power multi-core CPUs and GPUs, supporting high resolution displays and wireless connectivity. Actions Technology currently has nearly 500 employees, 425 of whom are engineers. Among these engineers, more than half have over three years of research and development experience. Actions Technology is ranked among the first in terms of engineering talent, project experience and product quality within the IC design industry in China. Zhuhai Actions Technology is a wholly owned subsidiary of Actions Semiconductor Co. Ltd..
About Actions Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
Actions Semiconductor is one of China’s leading fabless semiconductor companies that provides comprehensive portable multimedia and mobile internet system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for portable consumer electronics. Actions Semiconductor products include SoCs, firmware, software, solution development kits, as well as detailed specifications of other required components. Actions Semiconductor also provides total product and technology solutions that allow customers to quickly introduce new portable consumer electronics to the mass market in a cost effective way. The Company is headquartered in Zhuhai, China, with offices in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Taipei. For more information, please visit the Actions Semiconductor website at http://www.actions-semi.com.