Wind River, Intel to drive Open Source platform

DETROIT, TELEMATICS 2008, USA: Wind River Systems Inc. a global leader in device software optimization (DSO), announced that it is collaborating with Intel Corp. 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 optimized for the Intel Atom processor, which was introduced in April 2008 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 www.Moblin.org.

Moblin.org is a community Web site 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.

“Wind River, together with Intel, is developing an open, extensible software platform around which a rich ecosystem will evolve,” said John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at Wind River. “Not only will this 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.”

Wind River expects to deliver the open source specification and code to the Moblin.org in-vehicle infotainment community in August 2008.

“Automotive manufacturers face a tremendous challenge integrating rapidly evolving multimedia requirements into vehicles that typically have long development cycles,” said Ton Steenman, vice president, Intel Digital Enterprise Group and general manager, Low-Power Embedded Products Division. “Establishing 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.”

Open source solutions offer several benefits to the automotive industry, including no vendor lock-in for solution components or tools, broad options available for consumer electronics integration and the ability to customize a solution, driving manufacturer branding and differentiation. In addition, open source solutions such as Linux offer a flexible business model compared to proprietary solutions and leverage the efforts of the broader open source development community, resulting in reduced time-to-market.

Companies such as BMW Group, Bosch, Delphi and Magneti Marelli are actively supporting Wind River's strategy to drive Linux into the automotive infotainment market and its commitment to accelerate the defragmentation effort by creating a standardized platform so that OEMs and auto manufacturers may add differentiating services and solutions demanded by the modern day consumer.

Wind River already plays leading roles in collaborating with industry consortia aimed at developing open, Linux-based software platforms, namely: Eclipse, SCOPE-Alliance, OpenSAF, the Linux Foundation, the LiMo Foundation, and Open Alliance.