Canonical partners with AMD to enable Ubuntu on AMD Kria™ K24 SOMs

Canonical has partnered with AMD (since from when it was still Xilinx) for many years and we jointly deliver optimised/certified Ubuntu on multiple AMD device families, e.g. AMD Zynq™ UltraScale+™ evaluation boards and AMD Kria™ K26 SOMs (system-on-module). Canonical is pleased to announce Ubuntu is now enabled on AMD’s new Kria™ KD240 and ready for developers to download and install.

AMD Kria™ K24 SOM, simplifies the design of innovative industrial and commercial edge solutions

AMD launched its new Kria™ K24 adaptive SOM today, which delivers cost-optimising computing, scalability and adaptability, and easy signal processing that is ideal for robotics devices, industry motor controls and Ethernet getaways. With this SOM, it becomes very quick and easy for developers with no FPGA expertise to start developing their solutions. The Kria™ K24 SOM also offers connector-compatibility with existing AMD Kria™ adaptive SOMs that makes migration from older platforms a snap. 

Fig. AMD Kria™ KD240

Developer preview Ubuntu images now available for AMD Kria™ KD240 Starter Kit

Optimised Ubuntu kernels and images are now available for AMD Kria™ KD240 starter kit. Developers can download and install on your boards and run your applications immediately. The certification is right on the way and the certified Ubuntu images will be ready in the coming months, with which customers can benefit from the enterprise-grade Linux to the latest AMD Kria™ SOMs to accelerate their own development across various IoT verticals.

Faster time to development, deployment and go-to-market

Creating new embedded systems can be a resource-intensive process, consuming significant time and resources. Once the hardware design phase is completed, one of the most time-consuming and hindering tasks is setting up the operating system. Therefore, the selection of an appropriate reference platform with a pre-configured operating system becomes crucial. This is the reason why Canonical and AMD are collaborating to deliver the optimised Ubuntu on various AMD platforms. With the optimised Ubuntu on AMD Kria SOMs, costs are minimised for end-users who need to validate and maintain a dependable and trusted embedded operating system for their customised AMD boards. 

By using these images, developers can stay focused on developing their core applications, streamlining the design process and accelerating time to field deployments. 

End-to-end solutions for embedded software developers

Security is always one of the most significant concerns in IoT projects. Once the certification is done, with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, developers can access the latest security patches and updates from Canonical. This helps secure deployments against the growing attacks when developers build their applications on AMD Kria KD240, allowing them to focus on their applications development. 

Additionally, AMD has simplified the design by expanding flows beyond HDL, C/C++, ROS 2, and AI frameworks to now include Python and MATLAB®/Simulink®. No software tool installation is required to start evaluating and dive into coding, making it even more accessible for developers to get started with evaluation and coding without the need for any software tool installations. In the AMD Vitis™ unified software platform – a comprehensive software and hardware design environment – developers can leverage hardware acceleration libraries, including a newly introduced motor control library.

Cost-optimisation, scalability and long-term support

The AMD Kria KD240 creates cost-optimised and power-efficient industry solutions which are ideal for high-volume applications, benefiting from its performance-per-watt advantage.

Also coming from the AMD Kria family, Kria™ K24 SOM is connector-compatible with Kria™ K26 SOMs, enabling existing Kria customers to tune for power, cost, and performance without changing their PCB. With the scalability of Kria K24 SOM, developers won’t face the risk of being left behind or experiencing significant delays due to ever-evolving standards.

Kria™ K24 SOMs are built for a 10-year industrial lifecycle. With the 10 years of long-term support from Ubuntu LTS, enterprises can constantly innovate and deliver new projects on the board and deliver the best-in-class projects to their customers. Our collaboration with AMD fills this gap and enables the enterprise to keep developing their applications on the platform. 

“Customers can achieve cost savings without compromising performance and reliability by embracing AMD Kria™ K24 SOM. Adopting Ubuntu on the Kria™ K24 SOM will provide additional benefits in terms of security, long-term support, cost-effectiveness and reduced time-to-market”, said Aniket Ponkshe, Director of Silicon Alliances, Canonical.

“Canonical has been a great partner of AMD and our collaboration grows further as we bring certified ubuntu to the new power-efficient Kria™ K24 SOM on launch day” said Chetan Khona, Sr. Director, Industrial, Vision, Healthcare & Sciences, AMD. “the combination of KD240 drives starter kit with a widely used and ecosystem rich operating system like Ubuntu, helps propel products from ideas to production faster”

Get the optimised Ubuntu on KD240

The optimised Ubuntu image (for developer preview) is now available for AMD Kria™ KD240 Starter Kit, and the certified version will be available in the coming months. At this time, we expect K24 SOMs will be supported by the latest long-term support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu 22.04 from Canonical, ensuring security and compatibility all the way.

To learn more about AMD Kria™ KD240 and K24 SOM, please visit:
https://www.amd.com/kd240

Download optimised Ubuntu images on AMD Kria™ K26 SOMs and Zynq™ UltraScale+™ MPSoC.

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