Linaro welcomes the news that developers will be able to buy low cost, high performance ‘Origen’ development boards using Samsung's Exynos 4210 chipset, and run free open source software and tools that have been optimized by Linaro.

Software developers now have low cost access to the high performance Exynos mobile computing platform that packs features such as the latest multi-core Cortex-A9 CPU and multi-core Mali400 GPU, with 1GB of high end DDR3 memory. This board will be popular with developers of tablets, smartphones and other connected screens where leading edge performance, stunning graphics and the ability to drive HD displays is important. Linaro will provide source code downloads of Linaro Evaluation Builds of Android and Ubuntu from its website. The Linaro Evaluation Builds will be built with the latest stable Linux kernel and toolchain, and will deliver leading edge performance on a sub-$200 board. The provision of product quality software by Linaro will reduce time to market and ease the process of product creation using open source software and tools.

“The Origen board and Linaro’s provision of software and tools makes it easier, faster and less expensive for developers and companies to develop high-end embedded Linux products,” said George Grey, CEO Linaro. “Origen provides outstanding performance for tablets, smartphones and a wide range of embedded Linux products, and we are excited to be offering optimized open source components and builds of Android and Ubuntu for this development platform.”

“The new low cost ‘Origen’ board and consolidated software packages from Linaro are expected to enable easy and quick development of mobile platforms incorporating scalability of rich-features on a cutting-edge Exynos 4210 application processor,” said Dojun Rhee, vice president, System LSI Marketing, Samsung Electronics. “We are confident that our customers and the open source community will be able to develop their products in a timely manner through the innovative Exynos platform.”

The ‘Origen’ integrates mobile platform orientated features such as interfaces for HDMI, SD card, WiFi, Bluetooth, Stereo audio, LCD, JTAG debug and Camera. To enable future upgrade options the Exynos processor is mounted on a small daughter board together with high bandwidth DDR3 memory. The ‘Origen’ board will be available through its manufacturer.

Linaro exists to enable the latest open source software on advanced ARM SoCs, and to help to accelerate innovation among software developers. The current wave of "always connected, always on" devices are increasingly turning to Linux and highly integrated SoCs to achieve the performance and battery life consumers demand.