San Jose, CA; Intel Developer Forum — (press release excerpt) — MontaVista Software today announced that Hard Hat Linux support for Intel's new XScale system-on-chip processors is being prepared for production release. In January, MontaVista demonstrated the first working version of embedded Linux running on the XScale processor at LinuxWorld in New York.

MontaVista has optimized Linux and the associated development tools to take advantage of XScale-specific architectural features, and has also implemented such enhancements as performance tuning, reduced memory footprint, and integrated device interfaces. In keeping with MontaVista and open source practices, all such work will be submitted back to the StrongARM/XScale/ARM source trees, promoting the architecture for the entire community.

Intel unveiled the XScale platform last year as part of its strategy to extend the successful StrongARM technology base into the handheld/wireless marketplace. XScale is a powerful processor featuring cost-effective, power-efficient integration, targeted for applications in mobile telephony, personal connectivity, wireless video and handheld PCs, as well as for network infrastructure devices such as routers, switches and network attached storage. Unique to XScale is the ability to ratchet power consumption up and down to suit different computing loads and thus conserve battery life on handheld devices.

Hard Hat Linux 2.0 for XScale will be available in the third quarter of 2001 from MontaVista to subscribers of the Hard Hat Linux 2.0 Professional Edition. The first embedded target hardware supported will be the Intel IQ80310 evaluation platform, featuring the 80310 I/O chipset with a 600 MHz 80200 StrongARM processor core.

 
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