You may recall a little group of Linux-loving chums called Linaro, which was formed almost a year ago in the hopes of speeding up Linux development. Today at Computex, the company's taking one step further with the announcement of the Origen development board. Based on Samsung's beefy Exynos 4210 dual core chipset, the kit packs all the essential ports -- including HDMI, USB 2.0 host, SD slot, etc. -- for keen developers to get their hands dirty on, and its base board is also removable to accommodate future chipsets. Potential buyers are told to keep an eye on Insignal, which will soon be offering the basic Origen package for $199, along with optional parts at an extra cost.

Linaro partners with Samsung ecosystem to deliver exciting new low cost board 'Origen' to Open Source developers

Linaro provides optimized base of software and tools for highest performance low cost ARM board 'Origen' using Samsung's dual-core ARM® Cortex-A9 based Exynos 4210 chipset with high bandwidth DDR3 memory.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - May 30 2011 - 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 multicore 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 richfeatures

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 at
www.insignal.co.kr

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 "alwaysıconnected,
alwaysıon" devices are increasingly turning to Linux and highly integrated SoCs to achieve the
performance and battery life consumers demand. For more information on the company,
access to software and tools, and information on the community and open engineering, visit
www.linaro.org

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