Mentor unveils Android, Embedded Linux strategy by acquiring Embedded Alley

Design Automation Conference 2009, SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Mentor Graphics Corp.unveiled its Android and Linux strategy, including the acquisition of Embedded Alley Solutions Inc., an innovative leader in Android and Linux development systems.

By combining Embedded Alley’s Android and Linux products and services with the Mentor Graphics Nucleus real-time operating system (RTOS), tools and middleware, Mentor can now provide device manufacturers with all the software they need to build their products, and work closely with them throughout their product lifecycle to supply tools and services at every stage.

“Mentor’s strategy acknowledges two strong trends we see in embedded device development today,” stated Glenn Perry, Mentor Graphics Embedded Systems Division General Manager.

“One is a huge demand for Google’s Android platform in new, complex devices beyond the mobile phones for which Android was originally developed. The other is the growing use on multi-core processors of multiple operating systems, usually Linux and an RTOS like Nucleus. Our investment in Embedded Alley, and its products, open source expertise, and services, will allow our customers to innovate and build better products with power savings, performance optimization, and reduced system cost and risk.”

Mentor’s Android, Linux, and Nucleus products and services provide all the tools, runtime components and expertise required for customers to get to production with innovative products.

This ecosystem for Android- and Linux-based devices is supported by leading semiconductor partners, including ARM, Freescale, Marvell, MIPS, RMI, and Texas Instruments (TI). In separate announcements today, Mentor Graphics revealed support for the ARM Mali graphics processing unit family, Freescale Power Architecture processors and Marvell Sheeva MV78200 Dual-core Embedded Processors.

Embedded Alley was the first to market commercial Android tools and services in May 2009, for the RMI Au1250 SoC and the MIPS architecture.

“The Embedded Alley team is excited to bring our vast experience in open source development to Mentor Graphics,” said Pete Popov, CEO of Embedded Alley. “This is a huge win for our customers, who can now benefit from the combination of Embedded Alley's services and development systems with Mentor's products, services and outstanding support.”

“TI is pleased to learn that Mentor Graphics has acquired Embedded Alley, allowing Mentor to provide additional value to our customers developing with Android and/or Linux on our various TI solutions, including our OMAP35x platform,” said Gerard Andrews, OMAP35x product line manager, TI.

“With the combined expertise from Mentor Graphics and Embedded Alley, we’re confident that they will be able to deliver innovative and even stronger multi-OS/multi-core products that inspire new Linux- and Android-based designs. We’re excited and look forward to seeing the synergy between these two companies and their solutions that ultimately addresses our customers’ key careabouts on an open software platform, community participation and support.”

Perry continued: “As early developers in embedded Linux, Embedded Alley is well-known in the open source community, both as active participants in major projects such as OpenEmbedded, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, and Linux kernel development, and as leaders in commercial development based on open source software. Their strong reputation follows them into the Android commercial tool market, now placing Mentor Graphics at the forefront of open source software in embedded devices.”

Embedded Alley gained a tremendous lead in Android solutions by investing early and building on their deep Linux/open source experience and technologies. As pioneers in the embedded Linux community, the Embedded Alley team has been instrumental in defining product offerings, shaping business models and building market strategies for embedded systems.

Its unique approach to commercial open source products avoided “boxed” Linux distributions, and gave developers more flexibility and immediate access to the latest open source innovations.