MontaVista has added support for half a dozen new boards this month, and claims its commercial Linux distributions now support five times as many hardware platforms as its nearest competitor. Additionally, its distributions offer “the most extensive hardware support available on a common source base,” it says.

MontaVista claims to be unique in the industry, in supporting seven architectures, 30 processor variants, and over 200 modern board-level platforms. It says it maintains close relationships with “all of the major silicon and board vendors,” including AMD, AMCC, Freescale, Intel, Motorola, NEC, and TI, and that it adds platforms and boards constantly.

Additionally, MontaVista notes that its fifth-generation distribution, MontaVista Linux Professional Edition 4.0 (Pro 4.0), now supports 50 boards. It calls Pro 4.0 “the only Linux in the market that is proven in terms of quality, strict feature requirements, and advanced technologies.”

A list of boards supported by MontaVista can be found here. Recent additions, according to the company, include:

• April 17 — Intel MPCBL0010 for CGE 3.1
• April 18 — AMD (Alchemy) DBAU1200 for Pro 4.0
• April 28 — Intel MPCBL0040 for CGE 4.0
• May 2 — Freescale MPC8548CDS for Pro 4.0
• May 4 — Freescale MPC8349MDS for Pro 4.0
• May 13 — Intel MPCBL0030 for CGE 4.0
• May 13 — Intel MPCBL0020 for CGE 4.0
• May 15 — Sun Netra CP3020 for CGE 3.1
• May 19 — Freescale MPC8540ADS for Pro 4.0

MontaVista CEO Jim Ready stated, “Each generation of MontaVista Linux has seen us provide enhanced features and functionality that our customers and the market are requiring. With over seven years of experience deploying Linux systems, our fifth generation product is leaps and bounds above the competition in terms of stability and functionality. With thousands of customers running MontaVista Linux on millions of devices, MontaVista Linux is the world's most widely deployed commercial Linux available today.”

Raju Penumatcha, VP of networking at Sun, stated, “We have forged a strong relationship with MontaVista to bring embedded Linux to carrier-grade Sun Netra and ATCA-based platforms.”

Lynelle McKay, GM of Freescale's digital systems division, stated, “MontaVista Linux is a powerful complement to Freescale's processor platforms based on PowerPC cores.”

Scott McCowan, president of Artesyn, stated, “Embedded Linux is emerging as the dominant platform for building high-availability network infrastructure products. Our open architecture ATCA, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA blades, when equipped with MontaVista's carrier-grade Linux, provide an excellent platform for deploying a broad range of telecom infrastructure applications.”

Make or break year?

Early this year, MontaVista appeared to be facing a make or break year, with the possible replacement of CEO Jim Ready, reductions in force, and the departure of top marketing official Peder Ulander. However, its distributions continued to appear in new device introductions, such as Motorola's Ming smartphone and Japan's first DTV phone, the Panasonic P901iTV.

Additionally, last month, the company announced a high-profile partnership with Enea on a Network Application Services Platform (NASP) claimed to be the “most comprehensive, highly integrated software platform for distributed telecom applications.” NASP combines MontaVista's Carrier Grade Edition or Professional Edition distributions with Enea's high-availability Element middleware, Polyhedra fault-tolerant database, and Eclipse-based development tools.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.