News

11/8/2003

MontaVista Software Joins CE Linux Forum

Company Invited to Help Shape Linux Standards for Consumer Electronics Markets

MontaVista Software Inc., the company powering the embedded revolution, today announced that it has been welcomed as a member of the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), founded by major global consumer electronics companies last month. CELF intends to promote the use of the Linux(R) platform for digital consumer electronics devices and to develop and implement standards for a consumer electronics-specific Linux operating system.

Last December, Sony Corporation and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. announced their intention to establish such a forum. CELF was formally launched in early July, with these two founding companies. At that time, Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation and Toshiba Corporation joined the consortium as Appointed Members. MontaVista Software has now joined CELF as an Associate Member and will play a driving role in developing standards for the use of Linux in the digital consumer electronics market.

"It is wonderful that the world's leading suppliers of digital consumer devices have recognized the benefits of Linux to this market," said Jim Ready, CEO and president, MontaVista Software. "MontaVista Software is already working in various capacities with many of the leading companies in CELF including Matsushita, NEC, Philips, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, and we fully support them in their drive to encourage use of Linux in consumer products."

Earlier this year, MontaVista Software, Inc. made available MontaVista(R) Linux(R) Consumer Electronics Edition (CEE) 3.0. CEE is the first quality Linux operating system and cross-development environment specifically designed for consumer electronics devices such as mobile phones, digital televisions, set-top boxes and automotive telematics. CEE already addresses many of the requirements outlined by CELF; specifically, reduced boot and shutdown times, improved real-time capabilities, reduced ROM/RAM size requirements and enhanced efficiency of power management. Going forward, MontaVista Software will actively participate in CELF's development of Linux standards and is committed to support those standards in its future consumer-related products. MontaVista Software believes its customers will benefit from having products that are in alignment with future specifications recommended by CELF.

MontaVista Linux Consumer Electronics Edition 3.0 enhances Linux with dynamic power management, rich consumer-focused networking support and consumer-grade reliability. Based on the 2.4.20 Linux kernel, CEE 3.0 incorporates DPM (Dynamic Power Management), 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. CEE also features bundled power-management-enabled driver support for peripherals including digital cameras, IrDA, MMC cards and USBs.

MontaVista Software also offers a broad range of complementary products to assist developers building advanced consumer electronics devices on MontaVista Linux Consumer Electronics Edition.

These offerings include:

*IBM(R) WebSphere(R) Studio Device Developer 5.0 for CEE - A versatile and robust development and deployment solution for building embedded Java(TM) applications

*Qtopia(R) for CEE - A complete ready-to-use smart phone and PDA application framework

*Qt(R)/Embedded for CEE - The popular Qt/Embedded API

*MontaVista Graphics for CEE - A powerful network-enabled graphics system based on X Windows

www.mvista.com
www.celinuxforum.org