Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program Reaches New Milestones

DUBAI, UAE – 22nd February, 2015 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program has expanded to include more than 35 member companies, ranging from silicon vendors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to independent software vendors (ISVs).

Launched in July 2014 with nine participants, the program aims to deliver, via collaboration, a singular operating platform capable of supporting multiple partner-initiated system designs based on the 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture. As a part of that commitment, program participants have successfully completed the hardware enablement phase by incorporating necessary architectural requirements into the latest version of the development software. Based on that, Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program participants are now expected to contribute system-specific software and drivers to an open source upstream Linux community for incorporation into future commercial offerings.

Red Hat has a long track record of developing open source software and driving standards for 64-bit ARM architecture in a collaborative and transparent environment as a founding participant in the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG). By teaming up with Linaro members, many of whom are also participating in its ARM Partner Early Access Program, Red Hat is spearheading the effort to make open source and industry standards inherent to the emerging 64-bit ARM ecosystem. While the initial integration is completed, the ARM Partner Early Access Program plans to continue to accommodate future implementations and system designs by delivering development software, documentation and tooling to participating organizations.

Supporting Quotes

Mike Werner, senior director, Global Technology Ecosystems, Red Hat

“Since its launch just over six months ago, the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program has achieved two critical goals, driving significant interest and participation from both hardware vendors and independent software vendors as well as the successful completion of the hardware enablement phase. The program is a perfect example of how Red Hat, along with our vast network of partners and ISVs, drives standardization within specific technology segments, with the ultimate goal of delivery of fully tested and certified solutions to the marketplace."

Suresh Gopalakrishnan, general manager and corporate vice president, Server Business Unit, AMD
"AMD is a founding participant of the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program, and partners enabled with the  AMD Opteron™ A1100-Series processor development platforms are benefiting from early access to an enterprise class, standards-based Linux operating system for ARMv8.  This is a real collaborative effort to accelerate the growth of a robust ecosystem for ARM-based server and we are thrilled to be part of it."

Kumar Sankaran, associate vice president, AppliedMicro

“As the only silicon vendor shipping an enterprise-hardened, ARMv8-A Server-on-a-ChipTM solution and an initial participant of the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program, we are pleased to continue our work with Red Hat. The program is strengthening the entire ARM 64-bit ecosystem while allowing OEM and end-user partners the opportunity to work with fully operational software and hardware. We have had a great working relationship with Red Hat dating back to our X-Gene launch in 2011 and we are excited to provide a serious alternative to incumbent solutions.”

Larry Wikelius, director, Thunder Ecosystems and Partner Enablement, Cavium

"The Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program has successfully enabled Cavium's technology partners and end users to accelerate the validation and optimization of a wide range of software solutions on the ThunderX CN88xx Reference Platforms. Red Hat and Cavium continue to collaborate to ensure that the rich feature set of ThunderX that includes 48 core single socket and 96 core dual socket configurations, virtSOC™ technology with complete system virtualization along with integrated Ethernet, SATA and PCIe, is fully supported. Today's announcement is another critical milestone in the rapidly accelerating 64-bit ARMv8-A server ecosystem for next generation data center and cloud infrastructure. Cavium looks forward to continuing to drive this momentum with our industry partners.”

Susan Blocher, vice president, Product Management and Business Development, HP Moonshot, HP

“Today, customers are already leveraging the industry-leading HP Moonshot servers with 64-bit ARM technology to improve application performance, drive business innovation and deliver breakthrough datacenter economics. We are committed to working with partners in the Red Hat Partner Early Access Program to extend the ARM ecosystem and deliver enterprise-ready solutions to address customer challenges.”