CAMBRIDGE, UK - 15 FEB 2011

Linaro provides optimized base of software and tools for new low cost board (Snowball) using ST-Ericsson’s dual-core Arm® CortexTM- A9 based AP9500 chipset.

Linaro welcomes the news that the open source community will be able to buy low cost, high performance Snowball development boards using ST-Ericsson’s AP9500 chipset and run free open source software and tools that have been optimized by Linaro.

Software developers now have greater access to the most advanced application processors that can provide the performance of a PC in the power footprint of mobile. The Snowball Software Development Kit and Product Development Kit significantly extends the choice for software developers who want to create great code and products on a platform that costs less than a netbook, but with greater performance and longer battery life. The Snowball development boards combine powerful dual core Arm Cortex-A9 and Arm Mali™ GPU processors with open source software that has been optimized by Linaro.

Linaro exists to enable the latest open source software on the latest system on chips and help to accelerate innovation among software developers. The current wave of “always-connected, always-on” devices are increasingly turning to Linux and highly integrated SoCs to achieve the performance and battery life consumers demand.

“Developers will be able to come to the Linaro website and download the latest kernel, board support package and tools and know they are getting a great foundation to base their code or product on.” said Stephen Doel, COO, Linaro.  ”Our evaluation builds and validation test farm will ensure that there is a quick way to utilise our engineering directly with the major software distributions on low cost boards such as the Snowball SDK and PDK.”