Wind River, Intel To Drive Open Source Platform For Auto Industry

Wind River Systems, one of the leading players in the field of Device Software Optimization (DSO), has announced its collaboration with Intel Corporation to create an open source Linux platform for the automotive industry. Wind River, working with Intel, is developing an open source platform for the in-vehicle infotainment market. The open source platform will be optimised for the Intel Atom processor, which was introduced in April this year and will be ideally suited for in-vehicle infotainment solutions that demand connected, multimedia and graphics-intensive application support in a low-power envelope.

As part of a major new product strategy for Wind River and the broader in-vehicle device industry, Wind River will make available open source specification and code from the platform to the open source community via a new in-vehicle infotainment segment within Moblin.org. (Moblin.org is a community website for software vendors and Linux users to collaborate, share solutions and contribute code.) The code, in combination with the Intel Atom processor, will enable the development of Open Infotainment Platforms that are based on interoperable, standards-based hardware and software components. This will allow manufacturers to scale software across devices, leading to cost and development efficiencies.

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"The development of this open, extensible software platform will accelerate the pace at which new and compelling automotive applications are developed, we believe this will also allow new business models to emerge in the infotainment market", says John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at Wind River. The company expects to deliver the open source specification and code to the Moblin.org in-vehicle infotainment community in August 2008.

"Automotive manufacturers today face a tremendous challenge in trying to integrate rapidly evolving multimedia requirements into vehicles that typically have long development cycles," says Ton Steenman, vice president, Intel Digital Enterprise Group and general manager, Low-Power Embedded Products Division. "Established open infotainment platforms that enable developers to more quickly and cost efficiently create products is paramount. By extending Moblin.org to automotive application developers, we expect to see greater innovation from the open source community in this field."