This is not a hoax. A Silicon Valley company has started shipping an FPGA-based coprocessor designed to plug right into an open “socket 940” location on a standard multiprocessor AMD Opteron motherboard running Linux. (more…)

The Real-time Linux Workshop has issued a call for papers for its ninth annual event, set for Nov. 2-4 in Linz, Austria. This year's event has a special focus on industrial case studies, but authors are invited to submit original work on a range of topics related to real-time Linux. (more…)

Ocean Blue Software is readying a digital TV receiver software stack aimed at free-to-air and pay-TV digital set-top boxes and TVs for European, U.S., and Japanese markets. The stack, which targets Linux-based devices, aims to simplify the development of reduced-component-count consumer electronic devices based on Toshiba's second-generation TC9040x “Donau” processors. (more…)

A joint venture formed last year by NEC, Panasonic, and TI has announced its first product, a hardware/software reference design for a “3.5G” W-CDMA baseband subsystem for mobile phones. Adcore-Tech says it has already started licensing its design to partner companies developing mobile handset communications chips. (more…)

[Updated Jul. 17, 2007] — Embedded virtualization specialist VirtualLogix has announced series B funding of $16 million. New investors included Intel Capital and round leader Esprit Capital Partners, while existing investors Atlas Venture and Index Ventures also contributed. (more…)

Nokia's Navigation Kit for the N800 Internet Tablet works great when used in a car in metropolitan outskirts. However, the unit seems a bit pricey for what you get, is ill-suited to outdoor use, and seems to struggle holding a fix when the battery gets low. (more…)

A vendor of tiny, Linux-based SBCs (single-board computers) will soon begin accepting pre-orders for cellular networking and GPS daughtercards. Gumstix said its “Goliath” daughtercards target remote data applications such as fleet tracking, as well as “hobbyists who want to build their own… (more…)

The next release of the Linux kernel will apparently gain an all-new scheduler said to deliver better desktop scheduling. Ingo Molnar's CFS (“completely fair scheduler”) implements a fair scheduling approach long advocated by Con “Conman” Kolivas, a practicing Australian medical doctor specializing in anaesthesia. (more…)

A company in China is selling network computers (NCs) based on an SoC (system-on-chip) of its own design. Beijing Peking University Unity Microsystems Technology Co. (PKUnity) says its PKUnity NC runs Linux on a Unity-863 CPU, built around a “self-developed” Unicore32 processor and Unicore-F64 FPU (floating point unit). (more…)

Emac has introduced a PC/104-sized single-board computer (SBC) built around an ARM9-based Cirrus EP9302 SoC (system-on-chip). The iPac-9302 SBC targets embedded data acquisition and control applications, and runs Linux, Windows CE, and the .NET Micro Framework. (more…)

An IP (intellectual property) vendor in Ljubljana, Slovenia has licensed a RISC/DSP processor and several cores to a British Virgin Islands-based company specializing in TV tuner chips. Beyond Semiconductor says E3c Inc. will use its BA12 RISC/DSP processor and associated cores in ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) targeting consumer electronics applications. (more…)

[Updated Jun. 11] — Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) says its open source real-time virtualizing microkernel was used by Toshiba in a mobile phone widely available in Japan and Australia. Toshiba's W47T phone runs OK's OKL4 microkernel, and is distributed by KDDI, Japan's second-largest wireless carrier. (more…)

A new Linux kernel released over the weekend adds native support for Analog Devices Inc.'s Blackfin DSP (digital signal processor) architecture. The Linux 2.6.22 release supports six shipping Blackfin DSPs, along with several development boards. (more…)

A project to build an open, user-extensible Linux-based mobile phone has opened its online store for business. About 1,000 OpenMoko Neo1973 phones are available initially, primarily targeting hackers and developers, with general availability of a “mass market” phone expected… (more…)

New U.S. regulations went into effect today that could change how vendors of devices with software-defined radios (SDR) use open-source software. The new rules could impact manufacturers of mobile phones, WiFi cards, and other devices that use SDR technologies. (more…)