Embedded Linux specialist MontaVista Software moved to cement its position
as a provider of Linux for consumer electronics devices Monday, joining the
recently
formed Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) and revealing that CELF
member Samsung Electronics has selected the Sunnyvale, Calif., firm as the
preferred embedded Linux supplier for its electronic devices.
Samsung said it selected MontaVista Linux after a long and thorough
analysis, signing a corporate-wide contract to use all three editions of
MontaVista’s product — Consumer Electronics Edition, Professional Edition
and Carrier Grade Edition.
“MontaVista Linux is being used by world-class consumer electronics
manufacturers primarily due to its high performance, real-time capability
and service reliability,” said Young K. Choe, vice president of Samsung
Electronics. “We expect this contract with MontaVista will contribute to
Samsung Electronics’ timely development and placement of products and
technology for devices with embedded Linux.”
Through the deal, Samsung has accepted MontaVista as one of its worldwide
partners, and the electronics giant said “many” of its next-generation
devices will run on MontaVista Linux.
Samsung is an Appointed Member of CELF, and serves on the organization’s
steering committee. It is not alone among CELF members in turning to
MontaVista. CELF founders Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.
(Panasonic) already work closely with MontaVista on their products, and
MontaVista Linux is also used by CELF members NEC, Royal Philips
Electronics, and Toshiba.
As of Monday, MontaVista has been welcomed into CELF as an Associate
Member, through which it hopes to help drive development of standards for
Linux in the digital consumer electronics market.
CELF was born as an
alliance between Sony and Matsushita in December. In July, the two
electronics giants expanded the alliance to form CELF with the help of NEC,
Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba and Hitachi.
CELF is intended as a platform for discussing and formalizing the
requirements for extensions to a Linux platform geared to consumer
electronics devices, including cell phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, Internet
radios, residential gateways, automotive telematics, even Karaoke machines
and other audio/visual devices.
The forum’s initial goals include improving Linux’s startup and shutdown
time, improving its real-time capabilities, reducing ROM/RAM size
requirements, and improving the efficiency of power management.
MontaVista, which started talking
about joining CELF days after the organization was announced, said Monday
that it is well-suited to the organization because its Linux already
addresses many of the requirements outlined by the forum. Its Consumer
Electronics Edition 3.0, launched in January, is based on the 2.4.20 Linux kernel, and incorporates Dynamic
Power Management (DPM), support for XIP (eXecute In Place) of the kernel
and applications, streaming media optimizations, the O(1) real-time
scheduler, and new MontaVista System Measurement Tools to measure system
performance, timing and memory size. It also features bundled
power-management-enabled driver support for peripherals like digital
cameras, IrDA, MMC cards and USBs.
