Texas Memory Systems Joins Linux Foundation

Texas Memory Systems, which uses PCI-e solid-state drives (SSDs) to build storage systems, joins the Linux Foundation.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, announced Aug. 16 that Texas Memory Systems has become its newest member. Texas Memory Systems designs and builds solid-state storage systems for accelerating enterprise applications. It uses the storage technology PCI-e solid-state drives to provide solutions to the IT industry that allow for scalable, low-latency messaging with high throughput.

These requirements are found today in financial services, social networking and other high-performance computing (HPC) environments, a company release noted. Instead of a rotating mechanical disk, SSD uses memory chips (typically DDR RAM or flash memory) to read and write data. These drives are designed to eliminate the mechanical limitations and latency of hard disk drives and allow storage speeds to catch up with the speed of today's processors

"Linux is key to our long-term success," said Jamon Bowen, director of sales engineering for Texas Memory Systems. "There is an enormous amount of innovation within the open-source community, primarily driven through collaborative development. Texas Memory Systems wants to help accelerate that work in order to meet both the needs of the community and customers who need advanced high-performance SSDs in a variety of IT environments."

Texas Memory Systems will work with The Linux Foundation and the Linux kernel community to help ensure that its SSDs are supported in the mainline kernel, which in turn benefits Texas Memory Systems' customers using Linux who will have support for their drives out of the box. The company's efforts to upstream the Linux driver for supporting PCI-e SSD drives are part of an industry effort it is leading to ensure all storage manufacturers have support for new storage devices in the mainline Linux kernel.

"Texas Memory Systems is pushing the limits on enterprise storage and support," said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer programs for The Linux Foundation. "Solid state drives are the future of data storage, and the Linux Foundation is eager to work with leaders like Texas Memory Systems to optimize this technology for Linux."

Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by Linux and open-source companies and developers from around the world, including IBM, Cisco, Intel, AMD and Google. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by hosting important workgroups and events such as LinuxCon.