Several tech heavyweights have formed Linaro, a company aimed at jointly developing ARM processors. The founding fathers of Linaro are Texas Instruments, IBM, Samsung, Freescale, ST Ericsson and, of course, ARM.

Linaro is a non profit software engineering company that will simplify ARM development and it will be backed by tens of millions of dollars by its founders. The move doesn't come as a surprise, as ARM chips are becoming increasingly popular in smartphones, and recently, tablets and smartbooks. However, there are quite a few ARM chip designs around, and even more software versions geared towards specific versions. Linaro should help make things a bit simpler and more standardized.

We won't have to wait long to see the first results of Linaro's work. The first software packs and tools will be released in November and they will provide optimizations for recently introduced ARM Cortex TM-A series processors.

More here.