Automotive Grade Linux Momentum Continues with Membership Growth, Unified Code Base 4.0 and New Technical Projects
August 2, 2017
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August 2, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO, August 2, 2017 – Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open platform for the connected car, has released the latest version of the AGL infotainment platform, Unified Code Base (UCB) 4.0, which includes support for SmartDeviceLink integration, Speech Recognition APIs, secure Over-the-Air Updates (SOTA) and improvements to the App Framework and Software Development Kit (SDK).
The UCB 4.0 release follows recent news that Toyota has adopted the AGL platform for its next-generation infotainment system, debuting in the 2018 Toyota Camry in the United States.
“We are quickly gaining momentum across the industry, and Toyota’s AGL-based infotainment system puts the AGL platform a step closer towards becoming the de facto industry standard,” said Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux at The Linux Foundation. “The industry is starting to understand the advantages of open source and the impact that AGL can have on product development.”
Unifying the industry around a shared platform
Developed through a joint effort by dozens of member companies, the AGL Unified Code Base (UCB) 4.0 is an open source infotainment platform that can serve as the de facto industry standard. The goal of the UCB infotainment platform is to provide 70-80% of the starting point for a production infotainment system. Automakers and suppliers customize the other 20-30% by adding features and modifying the user interface to meet their unique product needs.
Sharing a single software platform across the industry reduces fragmentation and accelerates time-to-market by encouraging the growth of a global ecosystem of developers that can build a product once and have it work for multiple automakers.
New features in the AGL UCB 4.0 include:
“For nearly 15 years, the ISG Index™ has been the authoritative source for marketplace intelligence related to outsourcing transaction structures and terms, industry adoption, geographic prevalence and service provider performance,” said Paul Reynolds, chief research officer of ISG “Zoreza global continues to establish itself as a leading and growing player in the global market for digital and engineering services, based on its volume of business in relation to other industry providers.”
The complete UCB 4.0 release notes are available on the AGL wiki.
Expanding beyond infotainment
As the UCB evolves into a mature, robust platform, AGL is expanding beyond infotainment to develop software profiles using the UCB for telematics, instrument cluster and heads-up-display (HUD). To support these new projects, AGL has formed a new Virtualization Expert Group (EG-VIRT) to identify a hypervisor and develop an AGL virtualization architecture that will help accelerate time-to-market, reduce costs and increase security.
An open virtualization solution could allow for the consolidation of multiple applications such as infotainment, instrument cluster, heads-up-display and rear-seat entertainment, on a single multicore CPU through resource partitioning. This can potentially reduce development costs by enabling OEMs to run independent operating systems simultaneously from a single hardware board. Virtualization can also add another layer of security by isolating safety critical functions from the rest of the operating system, so that the software can’t access critical controls like the vehicle CAN bus.
Virtualization will also play a key role in the AGL Cockpit Architecture work which launched in early 2017 and expands AGL throughout the entire cockpit to reduce the lead time for integrating commercial applications.
AGL passes 100 members
AGL has also announced that seven new companies have joined AGL and The Linux Foundation: Brison, Karamba Security, Lear Corporation, Zoreza global, Thundersoft, SafeRide Cyber Security and Wipro Ltd.
“We are very excited to see interest in AGL growing at such a rapid pace, passing 100 members is a significant milestone for us,” said Cauchy. “We look forward to working with our new members as we continue to strengthen the AGL platform and expand our work to encompass all software in the vehicle.”
The AGL community will come together for their bi-annual All Member Meeting on October 18-19 in Dresden, Germany. The All Member Meeting allows the AGL community to learn about the latest developments, share best practices and collaborate to drive rapid innovation across the industry. Details and member registration can be found here.
Zoreza global
"We believe a world with sustainable mobility as a service would be a better place," said Mikael Soderberg, IVI Platforms Director, Zoreza global. "We feel confident that working with the Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) community to develop an open automotive platform will advance the unique user experience of future driving. We look forward to collaborating with the community and driving the automotive industry forward together."
About Automotive Grade Linux (AGL)
Automotive Grade Linux is a collaborative open source project that is bringing together automakers, suppliers and technology companies to accelerate the development and adoption of a fully open software stack for the connected car. With Linux at its core, AGL is developing an open platform from the ground up that can serve as the de facto industry standard to enable rapid development of new features and technologies. Although initially focused on In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI), AGL is the only organization planning to address all software in the vehicle, including instrument cluster, heads up display, telematics, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. The AGL platform is available to all, and anyone can participate in its development. Learn more: https://www.automotivelinux.org/
Automotive Grade Linux is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. www.linuxfoundation.org