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Intel, Wind River turn ignition on Linux for automotive electronics

The vendors expect that the contribution of Atom-optimized software components to the open-source community will spark innovation and reduce time-to-market for 'infotainment' applications.

By Matthew Miller, Editor-in-Chief, EDN.com -- EDN, 5/20/2008

Today at Telematics 2008, Wind River Systems and Intel announced their intention to create an open-source Linux platform for automotive applications.

Optimized for Intel's Atom processor, the platform will enable the creation of "infotainment" applications based on interoperable, standards-based hardware and software components, according to Wind River Systems.

Invoking the "ecosystem" buzzword, Wind River said it will deliver open-source specifications and code to the open-source community through a new in-vehicle infotainment segment of Moblin.org, which is billed as a community Web site for software vendors and Linux-using application developers.

Advantages of the open-source approach for automakers include brand differentiation, broad options for integration of consumer-electronics devices, and the avoidance of "lock-in" with a single electronics vendor and its particular roadmap and development cycles, according to the companies. In addition, the vendors said they expect that the approach will yield more innovation and reduce time-to-market.

Wind River also announced the Wind River Linux Platform for Infotainment, which will be available in the third quarter of the company's fiscal 2009 (also known as Aug. 1 through Oct. 31 of 2008).

Based on what the company bills as an automotive-optimized commercial version of Linux and also featuring Atom support, the platform will offer "pre-integration" with key building blocks of in-vehicle electronic systems, including speech-recognition and speech-to-text from Nuance Communications, Bluetooth with echo-cancellation and noise reduction from Parrot, music-management tools from Gracenote, multimedia-networking technology from SMSC, and DVD playback from Corel.

Key thrusts of the platform, according to the company, will include connectivity with popular consumer devices such as the iPod, support for three-dimensional graphics, broad multimedia-standard support, power-state management, fast boot and initialization times,  and connectivity with the automotive industry's CAN (controller area network) and MOST (media-oriented systems transport) network standards.

Related link: Open infotainment platform overview (PDF, Wind River)