Alibaba Group joins Linaro to accelerate development of software platforms for ARM Powered servers

CAMBRIDGE,UK -- APRIL 6, 2015 -- Linaro Ltd, the collaborative engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM^® architecture, today announced that Alibaba has joined Linaro as a Group Member of the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG).

The availability of a number of ARMv8-A 64-bit silicon solutions and software platforms creates additional choice and avenues of innovation for data centers. These platforms aim to bring the energy-efficient processing of ARM-based processors, coupled with a variety of workload optimized technologies that will help data centers reduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Alibaba will collaborate with a range of companies within LEG to optimize the ARMv8-A software platforms and maximize potential savings in a range of real deployment use cases.

“Alibaba Group’s infrastructure carries the world’s largest e-commerce ecosystem, in addition to China’s leading cloud services,” said Shuanlin Liu, Chief Architect of Alibaba Infrastructure Service. “We need the best technical solutions as we step into the DT (Data Technology) era. Hence, we’re investing heavily in the innovation of a wide range of technologies, including the ARM architecture. We will continue to work closely with partners to accelerate the development and growth of the ecosystem.”

Cloud-based services handle billions of revenue generating transactions today with significant growth predicted in the coming years. Large scale web and cloud properties rely on rapid and open innovation to achieve increased efficiency, scalability and intelligence throughout their infrastructure. The ARM ecosystem enables partners to innovate and develop workload optimized solutions, while safeguarding existing investments by leveraging a common instruction set architecture. Next-generation ARM-based cloud infrastructure will help businesses scale predictably; enabling access to important services whenever and wherever needed.

In 2014, three members publicly demonstrated fully integrated ARMv8-A 64-bit server silicon with initial production shipments underway. Target workloads include cloud hosting, web serving, caching, scale-out storage and analytics – all key components of a modern cloud software stack and areas where the Linaro Enterprise Group is actively engaged as an extended engineering team on behalf of its members.

“As one of the world’s largest cloud operators, Alibaba is continually pushing technology boundaries to efficiently deploy new services at a massive scale,” said Lakshmi Mandyam, Director, Server Systems and Ecosystems, ARM. “Their collaboration with the ARM ecosystem will accelerate and expand open source software choices for companies wishing to deploy ARMv8-A based servers. We welcome Alibaba’s participation in Linaro and the new dimension it will bring to an already vibrant community.”

“Since its start in November 2012, the Linaro Enterprise Group and its members have been developing an open source software platform in preparation for the release of multiple ARMv8-A 64-bit silicon solutions,” said Robert Booth, Linaro’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). “Now is the right time for data center hosts and others to accelerate the launch of industry leading solutions by helping define actual workloads and by working with Linaro’s engineering organization to develop and optimize the software. We are excited to welcome Alibaba as a Linaro member and look forward to working with them and benefiting from their breadth of sector experience to help fully realize the advantages of the ARM architecture in this market place.”

About Linaro

Linaro is the place where engineers from the world’s leading technology companies collaborate with Linaro’s own engineering team to define the future of open source on ARM. The company’s engineering organization comprises over 200 engineers working on consolidating and optimizing open source software for the ARM architecture, including developer tools, the Linux kernel, ARM power management, and other software infrastructure. Linaro is distribution neutral: its goal is to provide the best software foundations to everyone by working upstream, and to reduce non-differentiating and costly low level fragmentation.

To ensure commercial quality software, Linaro’s work includes comprehensive test and validation on member hardware platforms. The full scope of Linaro’s engineering work is open to all online. For more information about Linaro, visit http://www.linaro.org.