IBM announced the completion of a one-petaflop supercomputer that runs Red Hat Linux. Twice as fast as the previous record-setter, the IBM Blue Gene, the Roadrunner uses a hybrid design that combines 6,948 dual-core AMD Opteron chips with 12,960 Cell processor engines. (more…)

Saxnet is shipping three versions of its Debian Linux-powered wireless mesh-networking router. The standard Meshnode III offers a self-organizing transmission system with up to four 100 mW 802.11a/b/g radios, while a “Power” version ups the Wattage to 600 mW and a “Custom” version adds hardware customizability. (more…)

Aonix announced a symmetric multi-processing (SMP) version of its Linux-compatible real-time Java virtual machine (JVM) for military and telecommunications applications. PERC Ultra SMP optimizes PERC's garbage collection techniques for complex SMP environments, says Aonix, with an eye toward increased… (more…)

A small group of Texas Instruments (TI) employees is readying a low-cost development board with an open hardware design. The $150 “Beagle Board” powers up over USB, and aims to provide embedded developers and hobbyists alike with access to the “highest performance ARM-based system-on-chip available today.”… (more…)

Enea has upgraded its Linux-compatible interprocess communications (IPC) services software for distributed telecom systems. Linx now incorporates features that improve service availability, says Enea, including protocol/feature negotiation, priority messaging, and support for the new in-service upgrade capability in Enea's carrier-grade Element middleware. (more…)

MontaVista Software has opened registration and issued a call-for-papers for its Vision 2008 Embedded Linux Developers Conference. Scheduled for Oct. 1-3 in San Francisco, the second-year annual event will feature over 35 presentations and breakout sessions on topics of interest to… (more…)

Two just-published market research reports bode well for Linux's future in the market for higher-priced smartphones. J.D. Power reports that rising smartphone sales are driving handset prices higher, while ABI Research predicts Linux will take a 23 percent share of the smartphone segment by 2013. (more…)

Beijing-based Ingenic Seminconductor is shipping three MIPS-based SoCs (system on chips) that support Linux. The Jz4720, Jz4730, and Jz4740 target devices ranging from basic PMPs (personal media players) to smartphones, with “high performance and low power consumption,” the company says. (more…)

Embedded Linux developer services provider Timesys is distributing a real-time Linux kernel for ARM9-based Atmel processors. The 2.6.24.4-rt4 kernel includes Ingo Molnar and Thomas Gleixner's RT_PREEMPT patch, along with patches for high-resolution timers and other board-specific features for Atmel reference platforms. (more…)

Pika Technologies is shipping an IP-PBX appliance with a cross-compiling SDK (software development kit) based on Denx Linux and the open source Asterisk PBX software stack. “Pika Warp, the Appliance for Linux” supports 32 simultaneous calls, and provides music-on-hold and power failure transfer, the… (more…)

A software tool aimed at helping users administer macro benchmarks like kernel compile time tests has achieved its first stable release. Version 1.0 of the Phoronix test suite can download and compile various well-known open source packages, or users' own software, generating detailed XML/HTML reports. (more…)

McObject has upgraded its embedded, open source, object-oriented database management system (OODBMS) for Java and .NET environments. Perst 3.0 adds full-text search, embedded Java compression, improved documentation, and .NET native language querying (LINQ), says McObject. (more…)

Nvidia has added to its family of ARM11-based SoCs for mobile Internet devices (MIDs). For now limited to Microsoft Windows Mobile, the Tegra 600 and 650 boast IDE interfaces, HD encoding/decoding, and 10 times better power efficiency than x86-based alternatives, Nvidia suggests. (more…)

Belgian wireless firm Option has ported its network connection management utility to Linux, with the aim of targeting mobile Internet devices (MIDs). GlobeTrotter Connect for Linux aims to help users of Atom-based MIDs running Moblin Linux manage their 3G, Bluetooth, WiFi, and eventually, WiMAX… (more…)

Logic has announced a system-on-module (SOM) and development baseboard aimed at bringing ARM's newest Cortex-A8 architecture to medical devices. Logic's 3 x 1.3 inch “OMAP35x SOM-LV” baseboard and “Zoom OMAP35x” dev kit offer a choice of four Cortex-A8 processors, and comes with a Linux 2.6.22 BSP (board support package). (more…)