Linaro and Arm have launched CoreCollective, a new industry consortium designed to help companies solve shared software challenges across the Arm ecosystem.
Arm is arguably one of the most prolific, fundamental technology companies in the modern world, with its architecture powering billions of devices. Linaro is one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel – a central, driving force in open-source software development for the Arm architecture.
CoreCollective is set up as a neutral, open, and free forum where companies, regardless of size, can participate alongside a wide range of technology heavyweights to work on shared technical challenges, tooling, and standards across the stack.
Grant Likely, Senior Technical Director and Fellow, Arm, tells me that CoreCollective “wholly benefits the Arm software ecosystem and all parties that are active in the ecosystem will benefit.”
The vision is for CoreCollective to be the “go-to place” engineers and companies turn to when working together on Arm technology.
“We aim to provide the structure, organisation, and guidance for running successful working groups and projects so that our members can get on with building great technology,” says Likely.
Why the consortium is being formed
CoreCollective is designed to address the increasing demand for performance, efficiency, security, and interoperability across multiple modern workloads. Its aim is to reduce fragmentation and improve standardisation by pooling resources and expertise.
One of the major boons of the consortium, Likely tells me, is that its strong open source focus will enable the ecosystem to come together to solve common problems in the open.
“Developers are able to work together to solve problems across the open source software stack and across a wide range of Arm-based technologies, reducing fragmentation.”
Talking on the importance of keeping this open source, Likely explains that the previous open source model helped grow the Arm ecosystem through tangible technical achievements.
“One example is how the members of Linaro came together to transform and make Arm one of the best supported architectures in the Linux kernel and toolchain.
“Another example is our open source ecosystem’s significant contributions is Trusted Firmware. This is an open reference implementation of Arm specifications led by Arm and operated by Linaro for quick and easy porting to modern chips and platforms. We wanted to maintain the open spirit of working through problems. And, with Arm’s 40 years of commitment in open source, along with Linaro’s 15 years of experience in the open source ecosystem and working upstream, we’ve demonstrated that maintaining an open source approach isn’t merely nice to have, it is necessary for building our modern software stack.”
How the consortium works
The consortium is designed to drive extensive collaboration that reflects the realities of modern computing and the next era of the Arm software ecosystem. CoreCollective creates a neutral, open, and free consortium where the Arm ecosystem can collaborate to tackle shared technical challenges, drive standardisation, and accelerate innovation for developers.
CoreCollective is open and free for any company to join. Its purpose is to host working groups that focus on enabling Arm technology, solving problems, and ensuring a robust open source software supply chain.
Likely explains that working groups are already in place, with focus areas including: “Android, data centre, confidential compute, Edge compute, Linux fundamentals, virtualisation, and Windows on Arm.”
This focus area structure means that as more members join and additional target groups are added, the consortium can deliver standardised tooling and integration workflows that strengthen the software ecosystem.
Who is involved
At launch, CoreCollective already has support from the following hardware and software companies:
- Arm
- Linaro
- AMD
- Ampere
- Canonical
- CIX Technology
- Fujitsu
- Graphcore
- Microsoft
- Qualcomm
- Red Hat
- Samsung
- SUSE
Together, this collective brings deep ecosystem expertise, building on a strong foundation of open source, and bringing existing and future open source efforts into a transparent, collective framework.
Several of these companies have been involved in the Arm software ecosystem since the beginning, and the list is expected to continue to grow throughout the year.
CoreCollective will establish working groups to concentrate on priority areas where collaborative efforts can drive progress.
No barrier to entry
While the previous engineering organisation had its benefits, it became clear that the model needed to change, particularly around the financial path to participation. Companies across the ecosystem needed a lower barrier to entry. CoreCollective addresses this shortfall.
While Linaro will bring engineering and organisational leadership to CoreCollective, Arm is the financial backer. With Arm’s backing, the removal of costs to entry means more of the ecosystem can participate and focus on solving problems collectively.
CoreCollective was born from a wider industry call for a common ground to reach for in an ever-changing technological world.
“We listened to the broader industry shifts to create CoreCollective. With new, emerging workloads placing rising demands on high-performance, power-efficient compute, solving these challenges requires more than individual innovation. Open source touches every area of computing today, and we saw an opportunity to support and accelerate open source development in every environment with this organisation,” says Likely.
When talking about what excites him most about the consortium, Likely says: “On a personal note, I’ve been involved in open source projects for over 20 years. Open source has transformed how we build computing systems, and Linaro in particular has been incredibly influential in shaping the software ecosystem on Arm. I’m really excited about CoreCollective because it takes the kind of collaboration that we’ve fostered over the past 15 years and removes the barriers to participation for the entire Arm engineering community. I’m excited to see what projects and new technology are going to be tackled by CoreCollective members.”
A more inclusive and coordinated environment
For organisations building on Arm, CoreCollective offers a more inclusive and coordinated environment, lowering barriers to collaboration and making it easier to align around common technical problems.
As the consortium matures, its success will be measured not by who joins, but by how effectively the ecosystem can work together to solve the shared software challenges facing modern Arm-based computing.
