SUNNYVALE, Calif., September 22, 2017 – Socionext Inc., Linaro and GIGABYTE have jointly built a software development environment that complies with Linaro's 96Boards open hardware specification. Under the collaboration, GIGABYTE manufactures the 96Boards-compliant hardware with Socionext's SC2A11 processor, and Linaro provides support through its 96Boards community. The companies expect the new development environment to help the expansion of ARM®-based software in a broad range of applications including IoT gateway, edge computing and servers. The environment will become available to customers starting December 2017.

The rapid growth of IoT (Internet of Things) has led to an increasing demand for processing large amounts of data at high speed, in each phase, from data collection at gateways to edge computing to large-scale cloud servers in data centers. With these applications, the ARM architecture becomes a promising option for improving energy efficiency and reducing costs. In order to address these requirements, Linaro, GIGABYTE and Socionext have built an environment with a power-efficient processor that enables easy development of highly-versatile software using the ARM-native instruction set.

Socionext's SynQuacer SC2A11 integrates 24 cores of ARM Cortex-A53, the 64-bit, v8-based low power core, in a single chip. The processor has been optimized to handle tasks whose throughput is critical, though each of the individual tasks being relatively small-loaded. The chip consumes only 5W of power, thanks to its optimal low-power design. In addition, ARM TrustZone with extended feature is implemented into SynQuacer SC2A11, and the processor can be used for applications such as IoT gateways, where reliability and robustness are essential. With the SC2A11 built onto the 96Boards Enterprise-compliant standard hardware, customers can make full use of software from Linaro and use extension boards provided by the partners, to easily develop highly versatile software.