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ARM Holdings has reported a 27 percent increase in year-over-year revenue, an 25 percent increase in pre-tax profit, and the signing of 29 processor licensees — nine of them new. But both ARM and key licensee Texas Instruments have added a cautionary note about the rest of the year, given the shaky state of consumer confidence.
Dell is rolling out an open-source cloud-computing IaaS (infrastructure as a service) offering built around the Linux-based OpenStack cloud software and its own PowerEdge C servers. The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution also leans heavily on Dell's open source Crowbar technology, said to simplify OpenStack deployments and management.
Mentor Graphics has repackaged its embedded Linux and Android development platforms and services into an “integrated enablement program” for hardware companies. The Mentor Embedded Hardware Enablement Program provides services and training for embedded Android and Linux platforms, as well as Sourcery open source tools, Inflexion UI creation tools, and vertical market solutions, says the company.
SanDisk announced a 2.5-inch SSD (solid state drive) aimed at the retail market, with capacities ranging from 60GB to 240GB. Meanwhile, Intel reported a rare problem with its similar SSD320 devices, some of which have been erroneously claiming they have only 8MB of capacity.
Wind River announced the Wind River UX Test Development Kit, an Eclipse-based Android software testing platform that aims to reproduce human interaction with user interfaces. Wind River also updated the related Wind River Framework for Automated Software Testing (FAST) for Android to version 1.6, adding a benchmarking index, and new configuration, monitoring, and testing tools.
Mozilla has launched an open source project to develop a web-based operating system for smartphones and tablets, somewhat similar to the idea behind the netbook-focused Chrome OS. Based on the Gecko rendering engine used in Firefox, Boot to Gecko (BTG) incorporates Android components, including its Linux kernel and drivers, and provides an API system modeled in part on Google's NaCl (Native Client) technology.
AT&T announced that Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”) updates are planned for all of its Android smartphones that have been introduced this year, except prepaid models. Motorola Atrix 4G users will receive a Gingerbread update beginning July 25, and HTC Inspire 4G users will get updated “in the coming weeks,” says the carrier.
Microsoft and Attachmate business unit SUSE (formerly Novell Inc.) announced a four-year extension of their controversial strategic collaboration that among other things involves Microsoft's purchase of $100 million in additional SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates. Meanwhile, the Linux community puzzles over Microsoft's major contributing role to Linux 3.0, as well as its surprise video birthday greeting to Linux.
Axiomtek announced a fanless embedded PC that offers Intel's single-core Atom N455 or dual core D525 processors, along with a Mini PCI expansion slot. The eBOX620-801-FL supports up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, includes a 2.5-inch drive bay and a CompactFlash slot, and has three serial ports, according to the company.
Aaeon has added to its line of fanless embedded controllers with a model sporting ten serial ports. The AEC-6872 has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, two Ethernet ports, a CompactFlash slot, four USB ports, and a slot that can hold a PCI or PCI Express card, the company says.
Habey announced a 12-inch panel PC with a 1.8GHz, dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor and Nvidia Ion GT218 graphics card. Ready for home theater applications, the PPC-6512 offers HDMI/VGA dual display capability, plus mini-PCIe, SATA, USB, serial, and Ethernet connections, according to the company.
Red Hat released version 5.7 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, adding new drivers and KVM hypervisor improvements. In other enterprise Linux news, Oracle acquired Ksplice and its Linux-based hot-patching update technology, and an eWEEK review found the new Ubuntu-based Stackops Linux distro speeds the process of configuring and deploying OpenStack clouds.
Toshiba's Thrive is a decent, if unspectacular, entry to the trundling Android “Honeycomb” tablet market, according to this eWEEK review. However, the availability of multiple ports will please enterprise users, who might also like the removable battery better than did author Clint Boulton.
Android Market now lets developers mount multiple Android Package (APK) files optimized for different devices and releases, instead of selling the optimized versions separately, says Google. Meanwhile, security firm Dasient reports that eight percent of Android apps are transmitting personal user data to unauthorized computers, and some Android malware is specializing in “drive-by downloads,” leaving users unaware of what's being installed.
Linux 3.0 has been released, featuring a storage backend for Xen virtualization and an antifrag and data-scrubbing features for the Btrfs filesystem. Meanwhile, Thomas Gleixner released a major new, real-time Linux patch that will ready Linux 3.0 for highly-deterministic applications.