Innovation in automotive IVI is making a lot of heads turn

The speed of innovation in automotive IVI is making a lot of heads turn. No question, Linux OS and Android are the engines for change.

The open source software movement has forever transformed the mobile device landscape. Consumers are able to do things today that 10 years ago were unimaginable. Just when smartphone and tablet users are comfortable using their devices in their daily lives, another industry is about to be transformed. The technology enabled by open source in this industry might be even more impressive than what we’ve just experienced in the smartphone industry.

 The industry is automotive, and already open source software has made significant inroads in how both driver and passenger interact within the automobile. Open source stalwarts Linuxand Google are making significant contributions not only in the user/driver experience, but also in safety-critical operations, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and automobile-to-cloudinteractions.

 

Figure 1: Software complexity in IVI systems continues to grow. Today, the IVI system of an S-Class Mercedes has 100m lines of code. By 2015, it is expected to be 300m. A Linux-based solution, capable of scaling to handle the complexity, is mandatory.

 

Figure 2: An example of smartphone in-dash tethering: Drivers use the same smartphone apps in the vehicle as they do on their own smartphone, which provides a great deal of familiarity.

Figure 3: There are several ways to include Android (Android apps) in a Linux-based IVI solution. One method, which is becoming increasingly more popular, is using Linux Container Architecture. Here, Android sits as a guest OS on top of the Linux kernel. Privileges and permissions are tightly controlled.
refer:http://embedded-computing.com/articles/automotive-source-drives-innovation/