Calao Systems is a French company producing small Linux-based computers, roughly the size of a USB key.

Devices use an Atmel

Atmel

Atmel Corporation is a manufacturer of semiconductors, founded in 1984. Its focus is on system-level solutions built around flash microcontrollers...

 or a Nomadik

Nomadik

Nomadik was a microprocessor for multimedia applications from ST-Ericsson. It was based on ARM architecture. Nomadik application processors were designed specifically with mobile devices in mind....

 processor (based on ARM architecture

ARM architecture

ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

) and usually offer about 128MB of RAM (up to 1GB for the most advanced models). The operating system is placed in the 128MB - 1GB non volatile memory.

Devices are powered via a USB male connector which is plugged into a host computer. During development, communication with the system is also performed using this USB connection (there are no serial ports). JTAG

JTAG

Joint Test Action Group is the common name for what was later standardized as the IEEE 1149.1 Standard Test Access Port and Boundary-Scan Architecture. It was initially devised for testing printed circuit boards using boundary scan and is still widely used for this application.Today JTAG is also...

is also provided via USB.

Devices also have a connector to which small expansion boards can be fitted on the top of the main board. There are expansion boards for wireless, motion sensors, Bluetooth and so on.

All Calao USB keys have a wired LAN port. Some also have additional USB sockets.

Calao devices use U-boot and run version 2.6 of the Linux kernel. The company recommends the GNU toolchain to develop the software for these devices.