The recent Linux adoption rate within the automotive infotainment segment shows that Linux has become a viable alternative to traditional RTOSes that used to dominate this market.
Probably the biggest advantage of Linux in the current automotive market is the rapid development cycle and the innovation of the FOSS community in general. On the OS level, Linux has the advantage in providing connectivity – the new protocols in a traditional RTOS environment require porting, increasing both time-to-market and costs because it is a repetitive process for every change. Also, most semiconductor companies provide Linux together with the development boards for their chips. Last but not least, the availability of numerous applications – especially in the multimedia area – is a strong driving force of adoption of Linux in the automotive industry.
Now let’s talk about Linux world domination! (Seriously) – It is hard to say that Linux could ever dominate the whole automotive market, as Linux is simply not appropriate for some applications. In other automotive market segments, Linux is a great choice, especially in applications requiring connectivity, multimedia, and graphics. In these areas Linux is definitely here to stay and its acceptance will grow.
So far the automotive devices that use Linux are telematics devices, dashboards, and head units. The Linux acceptance among those devices is by far most evident in infotainment where we see many head units with announced SOP that are Linux based, many of these being GENIVI compliant devices. As GENIVI alliance’s specifications, compliance program, and delivered code matures, it will surely make Linux more attractive to the whole industry.
As for telematics, it can be anticipated that many of the traditional telematics functions will merge with the infotainment applications. The word telematics is composed of the words telecommunications and informatics. The broadest meaning would be computers that communicate. In this context infotainment can be viewed as a subset of telematics. The communication part in automotive is obviously wireless. Automotive telematics started in the 1990s with the deployment of specialized data networks like Mobitex (Ericsson) or DataTAC (Motorola), followed by GSM/SMS, GSM data, GPRS, 3G, and onwards. As network speed grows and prices drop, it will become more and more difficult to draw the line that divides telematics and infotainment.
