More on "1 million Linux-based motherboards a month"

I just blogged here (on my Tumblelog *) about Asus planning to release 1 million Linux-based motherboards a month with the "instant-booting" Splashtop Linux distribution embedded in those motherboards. (BTW, Asus calls Splashtop "Express Gate".)

The Splashtop site.

This post here has more about that news.

Splashtop is by a company called DeviceVM. (They have a URL but it seems to redirect back to the Splashtop site.)

The management seems to have a good background and they're funded to about $20 million by multiple venture capitalists:

"In August 2006, DeviceVM raised more than $10 million in a Series A, backed by Storm Ventures, DFJ Dragon Fund, Tim Draper, Asus, iD Innovation (started by Acer founder Stan Shih), Harbinger Ventures (started by Mitac-Synnex Group Chairman Matthew Miau), and strategic angel investors affiliated with major PC manufacturers (Intel, Lenovo, HP, eMachines / Gateway, Packard Bell, Foxconn, Quanta, Compal, etc.) In October 2007, DeviceVM raised additional $10 million, with existing investors, as well as new strategic investors from HTC, Merus Capital, Presidio(Sumitomo) and WR Hambrecht."

Their board of advisors has some well-known people, like:

Larry Augustin – former CEO of VA Linux (SourceForge / Slashdot / Linux.com)

Gokul Rajaram – former Director of Product Management for Google AdSense

Salman Ullah – former Vice President of Corporate Development at Google


Haven't seen any PC's yet with the Splashtop-enabled motherboards. But if it works as advertised (they claim it boots in 5 seconds or less), I'd say it would definitely be a useful and innovative product, and I'll check it out and consider buying a PC with it, once available.


[ BTW, I recently started blogging more frequently on my Tumblelog. The plan is to make frequent short posts there, and continue making regular posts on this LiveJournal blog (jugad.livejournal.com). Sometimes I may start with a short post on some topic on my Tumblelog, and follow it up (as in this case) with a more detailed, longer post here, on the same topic, if I feel it makes sense.

My Tumblelog is here and its RSS feed is here. ]

Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises