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Embedded Linux Consortium Officially Launched
Joshua Lamorie writes: "Rick Lehrbaum, the guy behind www.linuxdevices.com, and involved with the PC/104 Consortium has put together a group of heavy hitters from both the embedded world and the Linux world. The press release came out today, and lists the committee members. Also, on the Web site, there are archives of discussions about the creation of the ELC. This adds to the growing excitement about Linux in embedded systems over the past couple of months."
Definately a good thing. The embedded market, while potentially one of Linux'es greatest strengths, also has the potential to be a fragmentation threat. This sort of cooperation is an excellent safegaurd against forking. Hopefully, this will bring Lineo, Cygnus, and all the other embedded API players together before they move to far apart.
BTW, it's the APIs I'm worried about, not the kernel. The interoperability of the core kernel across no less than 9 platforms has convinced me that Linus, Alan, and all the other kernel developers can do portability very well.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
When I can telnet into my microwave, I'll be happy.
robr ~:$ telnet microwave.lan
Trying 10.31.33.7...
Connected to microwave.lan
Escape character is '^]'.
login: root
password:
root@nuker ~:# cook 10s cold_pizza
root@nuker ~:# logout
Connection closed.
Mar. 09, 2000
San Jose, CA -- (press release) -- Responding to the rising tide of interest in using the Linux operating system in embedded applications, representatives from dozens of embedded technology firms today announced formation of the Embedded Linux Consortium, or ELC, a vendor-neutral trade association dedicated to the advancement of Linux-based solutions in embedded applications. Today's announcement resulted from an organizational meeting held at the Embedded Systems Conference in Chicago, March 1, by representatives from nearly 50 companies.
During the organizational meeting, the group established a formation committee, appointed interim leadership and adopted an aggressive timetable for formally instituting the ELC as a highly proactive embedded Linux advocacy organization. Funds for the ELC's operation will be based on a schedule of annual dues, which will be developed in the next 30 days. At the meeting, over $100,000 was pledged towards initial funding. Rick Lehrbaum was named interim chairman and Murry Shohat was appointed interim executive director. Lehrbaum is known for his work in establishing the PC/104 Consortium. Shohat is a marketing consultant with extensive trade association experience.
"The initial intentions for the ELC are very clear," said interim chairman Lehrbaum. "Linux is now the fastest growing operating system for server applications. The embedded computer market -- which absorbs more than 95% of all microcomputer chips minted each year - is the next frontier. In essence, the goal of the ELC will be to amplify the depth, breadth, and speed of Linux adoption in the enormous embedded computer market."
Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, said "this new Embedded Linux Consortium is an expression of the current explosion of interest in using Linux in thousands of specialized embedded, mobile, and appliance applications. The ELC provides a valuable resource in advancing the growing use of Linux in embedded applications, an area where Linux can provide enormous benefit."
Paul Zorfass, senior analyst with IDC/FTI, said "Linux has shown the strongest market share growth rate in the bandwidth- and performance-driven server market. Linux is now beginning to establish a presence in the diverse embedded market where its reliability, modularity, scalability, configurability and low cost are extremely attractive. The new Embedded Linux Consortium comes at just the right moment to aid in accelerating the emerging trend of using Linux as the OS within a wide range of intelligent appliances and embedded systems."
The broad corporate participation in the ELC organizational meeting underscores the exploding interest in using Linux in a wide range of embedded applications and intelligent appliances. The organization will serve to facilitate development of common messages on using Linux in the fast-emerging world of Internet appliances, unattended systems, wireless access, home networks, set-top boxes, and a myriad of other embedded system applications. "Because Linux is open source, it lowers critical barriers of cost, time and risk, making it an ideal software platform for embedded applications," said Lehrbaum.
Formation committee members, representing firms ranging from startups to Global 500 computer hardware and software companies, include Accelent Systems Inc.; Aisys Inc.; Cendio Systems; Centura Software Corporation; Coollogic; IBM; Infomatec IAS GmbH; Lineo; LinuxDevices.com; Lynx Real-time Systems, Inc.; Microtronix Datacom Ltd.; MontaVista Software, Inc.; Moreton Bay; Motorola Computer Group; NewMonics, Inc.; OpenSystems Publishing; QNX Software Systems Ltd.; Red Hat, Inc.; TimeSys Corporation; Transvirtual Technologies, Inc.; Troll Tech; Wind River Systems, Inc.
A membership application is located * here *. For membership and general information, please contact Murry Shohat at 707-576-0111, or murry@sonic.net.
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
Some of the articles I have seen her on /., or linuxtoday.
I wish that they had more information on the boards and devices themselves. I am looking for small solutions. I'd love to have a few small computers on my desk each running a different OS. It really only is a new portal.
I have found some interesting things on there site though that may actually seperate them from the rest. They actually show hardware for embedded devices. I will definately be looking into this for my tiny devices needs.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
I've watched his methods in the market since the days of the Ampro Little Board 1-A. He's excellent at pulling together consensus in the fuzzy corners of the embedded market, after which you don't hear news about that area because there's no further controversy, there's just solidly made products by a number of vendors competing on features and cooperating on standards.
This means that Embedded Linux will fragment freely, as it must to fill adjacent niches, but it won't fracture.
You need to mount the magnetron, load the turntable motor control values, enable them both
yeah, but you could write a perl script to cook a whole dinner. you'd need one of them hacked barney dolls to put food into the nuker and take it out again. or fucking aibo. no doubt you could drag legos into it and set up a whole bank of nukers as a beowulf cluster
some idiot will run a web server on his microwave. and slashdot will run a story about it.
"Refract" rather than "fragment"... the center DOES hold.
Many people only know about the Microsoft that dominates the desktop and server OS markets, but don't realize that they're also working VERY hard to take over the embedded systems market. At the low end (sorta), there's CE (or pocket Windows or whatever), and at the high end, there's Embedded NT, which finally launched a month or two ago.
I can see how MS has been so successful - the embedded industry is very fragmented, and the tools are often quite archaic.
I happen to use a non-MS RTOS that I quite like, but I've seen the company that sells it sink and suffer ever since MS arrived on the block. I'm worried about what to do if/when MS stomps them out of existence. It doesn't help when the PHB asks why we can't just use Windows for the OS in our product (reason one: 3MB RAM available).
I've been following the embedded linux buzz for the past year or so, and I see it as a savior to hundreds of developers who are in the same position that I'm in.
= = = = = = = = = == = = = = = = = = = = =
PS - Any programmers with embedded and/or linux experience lookin' for work in the North SF Bay area? Contact me at "glonq at hotmail dot com".
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
There's a real need for an open-source real-time protected-mode operating system, but Linux, or any UNIX variant, isn't it. L4 has real potential, but it's not finished yet. Already you can run Linux on top of L4. If you're into embedded open-source real-time, get behind L4 and push.
What about ELKS? It's probably the oldest of the 'embeddable' Linux projects, but you don't see any press releases mentioning it.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I am working on a FibreChannel adapter that uses the I2O (Intelligent I/O) model. We are currently using WindRiver's IxWorks for StrongArm but as part of our next design we are looking at other solutions. As you might imagine, speed is critical. We looked into using a Linux or BSD based system and found that an open Linux/BSD solution was better than a proprietary solution. The only problem was it required so much customization that we found writing our own system from scratch could give us a better, more specific solution in about the same amount of development time. I suspect that in a world where resources are scarce and every clock cycle matters, a lot of companies are going to find that a general (although customizable) solution like Linux will have trouble competing with a completly specific solution. Companies that do not have the technical resources to start from scratch will find Linux attractive but for companies like mine where we have people that have a lot of operating system and specifically mission critical system development experience, Linux/BSD does't provide a real edge.
Linux may work well for cable boxes, digital video recorders, and PDAs but can it run a FibreChannel adapter? How about a realtime system to be used in manufacturing? I think that it can do it but each of these situations and many others require so much customization that it begs the question, "Why not just do it from scratch?"
-- soldack
The biggest problem with embedded MS and what will kill them in this market is their high resource demands and relative instability of their OS base. For toys like a cable box, MS can do pretty well. If it crashes, just flip it on and off. For something like a FibreChannel adapter or Gigabit Network adapter (both of which I have worked on) I can't imagine CE or Emb.NT making the grade. RealTime NT is a long way off from being a real choice. Without source access, it isn't customizable. That means it has to be very general in order to meet the demands of all their customers. How can this compete with an open source project where I company can create a stripped down solution that only has what the need in the way that they need it.
-- soldack