Red Hat Launches ARM Partner Early Access Program for Partner Ecosystem

New program embraces key open standards and practices; enables partner collaboration around datacenter innovations based on 64-bit ARM® architecture

RALEIGH, N.C. – JULY 30, 2014 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the launch of the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program to enhance partner collaboration and facilitate partner-initiated system designs based on the 64-bit capable ARMv8-A architecture that include Red Hat software. The program will be aimed at silicon vendors, independent hardware vendors (IHVs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and original design manufacturers (ODMs), and launches with participation and support from several ARM ecosystem leaders, including AMD, American Megatrends, Inc., AppliedMicro, ARM, Broadcom, Cavium, Dell, HP and Linaro.

During the evolution of the 64-bit ARM ecosystem, Red Hat has consistently worked to establish open source and industry standards as integral components of the emerging architecture. Through founding participation in the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG), Red Hat has driven the development of open source software for ARM architectures in a collaborative and transparent environment. More recently, Red Hat participated in the creation of the Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) specification released by ARM to help accelerate software development and enable support across multiple 64-bit ARM platforms.

• Today’s ARM Partner Early Access Program announcement enables Red Hat and its partners to better address the evolving ARM ecosystem by:
• Supplying participants with early stage development software, documentation and tools.
• Collaborating with partners to create a singular 64-bit ARM server software platform that relies on common standards.
• Enabling faster innovation within ecosystem organizations, such as LEG, by providing a common development platform to enable deployment ready future 64-bit ARM software.
• Gathering requirements around partner needs within the ARM ecosystem and using this information to create a unified common software platform capable of supporting multiple hardware designs.

Red Hat expects the participants in its ARM Partner Early Access Program to contribute to more streamlined and applicable implementations of 64-bit ARM standards and practices. Additionally, through collaboration with program participants, Red Hat will be able to evaluate technical features across various market segments, develop feedback-based targeted use cases, and perform market demand assessments that could influence future product decisions.

Supporting Quotes
Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platform Business Unit, Red Hat
“The Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program continues Red Hat’s efforts to drive open standards and best practices within the 64-bit ARM ecosystem, enabling tighter collaboration with leading innovators in the ARM ecosystem. By providing our participating partners with the tools, resources and support needed to build a common development platform, we can help facilitate partner-driven 64-bit ARM solutions that are based upon Red Hat technologies.”

Suresh Gopalakrishnan, general manager and corporate vice president, Server Business Unit, AMD
"The Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program is an excellent vehicle to help accelerate a robust ecosystem for ARM-based servers. In addition to our participation in the Red Hat ARM PEAP, AMD is pleased to support this growing community with standard ARM Cortex-A57 ARMv8 based hardware alongside the newly announced AMD Opteron A1100-Series processor development platform."

Subramonian Shankar, president and CEO, American Megatrends, Inc.
“AMI is fully committed to its role as a leading provider of BIOS and UEFI solutions for 64-bit ARM platforms, by being the first independent BIOS vendor to offer a complete early stage solution for the 64-bit ARM ecosystem. Working closely with industry stalwarts such as Red Hat enables AMI to deliver more compelling and engaging solutions for the 64-bit ARM ecosystem including debug and diagnostic tools as well as a complete integrated development environment for UEFI. The end result of our collaboration is a deeper, more efficient platform design and development experience, which in turn enables the creation of the next generation of 64-bit ARM platforms to meet the demands of tomorrow's high efficiency, high performance server platforms.”

Gaurav Singh, vice president, Technical Strategy, AppliedMicro
"For more than three years, Red Hat and AppliedMicro have collaborated on support for the 64-bit ARMv8 Architecture within the Linux community, demonstrating open source technologies running on AppliedMicro's X-GeneTM Server-on-a-ChipTM at every major step along the road. As the only silicon provider with a 64-bit ARM-based server solution in production today, we appreciate the importance of creating a common development platform based upon Red Hat technologies. We look forward to continuing our collaboration as part of the Red Hat ARM PEAP program to provide additional solutions and tools to our customers as they enter the ARM enterprise server space."

James McNiven, general manager, systems and software group, ARM
“Red Hat’s early access program will accelerate the development of a robust enterprise ecosystem, built on a strong open source foundation. Collaboration and standardization are vital cornerstones of the ARM ecosystem, ensuring C-Suite decision makers have the freedom to choose from a diverse range of infrastructure solutions. Today marks a major milestone for the open source community and the ARM server ecosystem on the path to broader adoption of the ARM architecture throughout the enterprise.”

Chuck Tato, product marketing director, Broadcom
“We are excited to be part of Red Hat’s ARM Early Access Program. Through our participation, Broadcom will have access to early code drops of Red Hat software for the 64-bit ARM ecosystem and will work with them to develop a more streamlined and optimized operating environment for Broadcom’s high performance ARM-based SoCs.”

Larry Wikelius, director, Thunder Ecosystems and Partner Enablement, Cavium
“Cavium has played a leading role in defining key ARM standards such as SBSA, UEFI and ACPI and has also contributed significantly to the ARM open source ecosystem. Having successfully tested Red Hat software independently on our ThunderX SDK, we are pleased to be able to expand this work through participation in the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program to the ultimate benefit of partners and end users looking to take full advantage of next-generation datacenter and cloud technologies."

Robert Hormuth, executive director, Enterprise Platform Architecture & Technology, Dell
“Dell has been at the forefront of innovation in the development of low-power technologies and an integral proponent of open and standard based designs for decades. Enabling the ARM ecosystem will provide exceptional gains for our customers when it comes to performance per dollar and performance per watt. We are excited to be part of the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program to help foster collaboration within the community and extend our deep expertise in developing workload optimized ARM solutions.”

Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager, HP Moonshot
“HP and Red Hat have a long history of working together to deliver innovative open source and open standards-based solutions that enable customers to optimize internet-scale applications, achieve breakthrough economics, and enable IT to support the rate and pace of business growth. We look forward to the role that the HP Moonshot 64-bit ARM system, which is ideal for software development and production workload deployments, will play in the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program and advancing the ARM ecosystem.”

George Grey, CEO, Linaro
"Linaro is very pleased to participate in the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program, which we believe is key to enabling the broader ARM ecosystem. We look forward to using the program's releases for our open source software efforts, including development, optimization and validation of open source technologies for the ARM server ecosystem on our member's server-class hardware platforms. This furthers our strong collaboration with Red Hat, a founding member of the Linaro Enterprise Group, while leveraging Linaro's unique position to support core industry standards for Enterprise-grade Operating Systems including UEFI, ACPI, OpenJDK, Hadoop and OpenStack."

Additional Resources

• Learn more about Red Hat, hyperscale computing and 64-bit ARM servers
• Read more about the Red Hat ARM Early Access Program
• Find out more about Red Hat Partner Early Access Programs

About Red Hat, Inc.
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