ARM Takes Stake in Japanese Software Developer

Mar 5, 2009 20:48 Tomohisa Takei, Nikkei Electronics

ARM Ltd of the UK and eSOL Co Ltd announced March 4, 2009, that ARM agreed to acquire part of eSOL's shares and form a capital alliance with it.

ARM bought 5% of eSOL's outstanding shares. This is the first time that ARM has acquired shares of a Japanese embedded software company.

"ARM and eSOL have cooperated in various forms thus far," eSOL's corporate planning office said. "The capital alliance is a step to further develop the partnership."

The two companies are currently considering a business partnership following the capital alliance, targeting primarily automotive information devices.

They will embed eSOL's real-time OS, "eT-Kernel," and its multi-core version, "eT-Kernel Multi-Core Edition," on ARM's "Cortex" series CPU cores and build up a platform of automotive information devices that comply with the specifications formulated by AUTOSAR (Automotive Open System Architecture).

eSOL made its eT-Kernel Multi-Core Edition support NEC Electronics Corp's "NaviEngine," a SoC for automotive information devices that features ARM's multi-core processor core, "ARM11 MPCore," before.

According to the two companies, the capital alliance does not entail any exclusive contracts.

"It is possible that we will offer hardware equipped with ARM's CPU core and eSOL's real-time OS as a package," the office said. "But the business neutrality of the companies will remain intact. eSOL has thus far provided real-time OS and software development environment for various CPU cores including ARM's, and we will continue to pursue that policy."

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