Linux Takes On Automotive Apps

loconet writes "Linux Devices has released an article about Metrowerks setting out to drive Linux further into the automotive telematics market by launching what it calls "Automotive Grade Linux," a version of Linux enhanced with non-traditional features to address the specific requirements of automotive telematics."

Comments

Errors

[niteice]

Kernel Panic: Your engine a splode!

Re:Errors

[agent dero]

After going to classes all day with far too many foreigh professors that have heavy accents. That was too funny, My sides hurt.

Urm, to keep it on topic, I for one welcome our new linux-powered-automotive-overlords

HA!

[Jozer99]

Your Corola has been rooted!

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can totally play Quake while I'm driving.

Re:Awesome

[Richard Dick Head]

Well I don't know about Quake, but running a racer game with The Kernel reading your steering wheel and pedal movements, and outputing scenery to some flat panels pasted on your windows would be WAY cool. Then just so you don't have to take em off, use pwnboard cameras to give you a 360 FOV through the front.

Can you say Penguin Power bumper sticker? :D

Let's hope it's not Gentoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only 17 days left until we can leave hon, I'm just compiling starter.so"

Re:Let's hope it's not Gentoo!

[dcstimm]

well we could just run a stage3 install of starter.so but you wont be able to drive as fast. Sorry

Re:Let's hope it's not Gentoo!

[gnu-generation-one]

Gentoo: "Only 17 days left until we can leave hon, I'm just compiling starter.so"

Windows: "You have 27 days to register before your car is deactivated"

Linux: F*!*ing XFree86-config... (sorry, installing debian at the moment)

BSD: Only one careful driver in the last 10 years.

Something new?

[erick99]

I hadn't heard of Automotive Telematics before, nor did I know it was a $14 billion market and, even more surprising (to me), Microsoft has a version of CE that was released in 2002 and updated in 2003 that is specifically for that market. Well, you learn something new everyday within the hallowed halls of SlashDot. That said, I would think that Linux would be an ideal platform for this because it does meet the requirements for telematics as set forth in the article. I wonder how M$ will respond? Or, is it a big enough pie for everyone to have a slice?

One problem:

[comwiz56]

How many car manufacturers are going to be putting some untested software into cars. Not only from a safety/reliability standpoint, but they also probably want to keep the locks closed on access to the software, and open source wouldn't work with this model.

Re:One problem:

[IamGarageGuy 2]

Let's not be too alarmist here. This is the automotive market here, bad press for them is the deathnell of a product. If anybody is going to test, retest and test again it will be them. I am not a fanboy but I know that this is a market segment that relies heavily on reliable products and will spend untold millions if not billions just on testing alone.

Re:One problem:

[i.r.id10t]

Porsche hasn't had a HP or top speed advantage for a long time. Heck, I know a few people who run SSCA events in 356s (75-90hp max from factory) and actually turn in better times than many much newer cars from many different manufacturers. Its all about the handling.

Re:One problem:

[barzok]

OK, lets learn what is the difference between the two. Two or three valves per cylinder are better (more efficient?) because they allow more air intake as compared to the total cylinder head available space. OHC vs. OHV, how does it work?

On the off chance that this isn't a troll...

More valves = more air. More air coming in means more efficient combustion, generally.

All modern automobile engines I'm aware of (with the exception of Mazda's rotary) are OHV.

"Pushrod" engines have the camshaft in the bottom of the V of a V-type engine, just above the crankshaft, and driven by a chain off the crankshaft. The camshaft pushes on rods, which then push levers (rocker arms) which operate the valves. This wastes a lot of energy, and generally is limited on the RPMs (unless you're building race engines). To get more than 2 valves per cylinder, you'd need a lot more pushrods and lobes on the cams (which there isn't room for), or some extra levers/paddles over the valves to split the force of the pushrod. But that can flex, and flex is bad. And you'll waste more energy regardless.

An Overhead Cam engine has the camshafts directly above the valves, no pushrods. To add a second pair of valves, move the first set to the side, along with their camshaft, and put a second set right next to them. These engines are much easier to run at high RPMs.

Could the latest HEMI design be 4-valved to produce a Ferrari-killing 650HP?

Well, the true HEMI design from the '50s and '60s can do it with 2 valves per cylinder. The new one requires more than '60s knowledge to do it, due to all the computer controls which haven't been cracked yet. The engine hasn't been picked over by the shadetree "hackers" yet. And can it do it and still meet emissions?

Competition

[vijaya_chandra]

Hope linux'd compete well against ms in this field and save us avoiding those microsoft cars' jokes from becoming a reality

Re:Competition

[datGSguy]

Your crash was caused by an error from an unkown driver. Just can't get good help these days....

Hmmm, maybe they're using a USB LP interface

[temojen]

...
static char *usblp_messages[] = { "ok", "out of paper", "off-line", "on fire" };
...

from hpoj printer.c

Strange article

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

More than half of words were buzzwords or acronyms.

Anyway, why exactly do you need a PowerPC 603e and two USB ports for..uh..diagnosing cars? Seems to me that the hardware is a bit overkill, and an embedded direct solution might function a little better by avoiding the overhead of simply running Linux. Don't get me wrong; Linux is great for full-powered machines, but this doesn't need to be full powered.

Re:Strange article

[erick99]

The article states:

What automotive telematics is not

Automotive telematics does not include areas of automotive computing that involve powertrain management (such as fuel-injection microcontrollers), or what Metrowerks terms "body/safety/chassis" computing applications. These applications are typically based on proprietary process-based real-time OSes such as QNX, VxWorks, AE, LynxOS and others.

Re:Strange article

[nels_tomlinson]

Anyway, why exactly do you need a PowerPC 603e and two USB ports for..uh..diagnosing cars?

The car has a computer onboard. It takes one to know one, so to speak. You have to interface with the onboard diagnostic system to read the trouble codes it has stored. You can read the codes with a simple tool. According to the article, this has nothing to do with diagnostics, though; that was about the only thing the article didn't mention. Way to many buzzwords. The article did mention:

Call center services such as GM OnStar In-car navigation and guidance systems Car/cellphone integration (for example, for hands-free operation through the radio and a dash-mounted microphone) XM radio and Becker Online Pro Fleet management systems such as Qualcomm Omnitracs

... an embedded direct solution might function a little better by avoiding the overhead of simply running Linux.

If you're going to have a network interface and drive a terminal or a gui, you can either reinvent Linux, poorly, or you can use whatever portions of Linux help. Since you can fit the entire OS on a single floppy, I don't think it has to be any heavier than is really necessary.

Re:Strange article

[aggieben]

This area happens to be within the scope of my research, and I think it would be next to impossible to go overboard with the hardware.

Anyway, why exactly do you need a PowerPC 603e and two USB ports for..uh..diagnosing cars? Seems to me that the hardware is a bit overkill

Overkill? If anything, the PPC 603e is way undershooting what I think could/should be appropriate for automotive computing. Why not a 3GHz Pentium? I admit I don't know the numbers in terms of converting electrical consumption to gallons/mile, but I imagine it's fairly negligible, especially when compared to the requirements for air conditioning.

And as far as USB ports go...the more the merrier! Diagnostic devices could use them, MP3 players and other portable storage devices could be used, or even a laptop.

...but this doesn't need to be full powered.

I can think of several applications where having a "full-powered" computer in a car would be useful, not least of which is if you are on an automotive network (which doesn't really exist yet) and the environment requires high-grade encryption or other measures to provide the appropriate security. If the automotive network is P2P, lots of resources might be needed to make it work well.

For things going on *today*, maybe not much is needed, but why not provide more than what's needed so that people don't have to retrofit cars with more powerful computing hardware because the manufacturer only gave them a PPC 603e?

Re:Strange article

[wskellenger]

This area happens to be within the scope of my research, and I think it would be next to impossible to go overboard with the hardware.

If your research is somehow connected to the auto industry, it sounds like you need to visit Detroit.

I can think of several applications where having a "full-powered" computer in a car would be useful, not least of which is if you are on an automotive network (which doesn't really exist yet) and the environment requires high-grade encryption or other measures to provide the appropriate security. If the automotive network is P2P, lots of resources might be needed to make it work well.

Almost every vehicle produced today uses some sort of network to allow all of the modules to communicate together. The most common is CAN. Please list three more applications where this type of computing power would be useful.

Overkill? If anything, the PPC 603e is way undershooting what I think could/should be appropriate for automotive computing. Why not a 3GHz Pentium?

What types of computing tasks do you think are necessary inside an automobile, and what types of processors do you think are employed today? The ABS controller that I work on utilizes a 33MHz Motorola (proprietary) micro. The code that runs it is highly optimized, and every byte of RAM is scrutinized.

...but why not provide more than what's needed...

A ten-cent change will be discussed for literally hours on high volume platforms, because that $0.10 * 250,000 cars/year = $25,000. You're talking about hardware that will cost significantly more than what's employed today. And the benefit? None.

If Operating Systems Drove Your Car to the Store

[weston]

"UNIX

You get in the car and type grep store. You are given a list of 400 7-11's in your area and 50 grocery stores. After picking one and reaching speeds of 200 miles per hour en route, you arrive at the barber shop."

-- If Operating Systems Drove Your Car to the Store

this could be the start of somthing cool

[spacerodent]

It would be nice if they would start to use Linux in all machines where they wanted to write code with minimum overhead. I know people that have written large ammounts of code for everything from car computer systems to alarm clocks and its usually it some form of basic or C. Imagine if most of these products starting using a simple Linux system where you could reuse all kinds of crazy crap. You could be running toaster timers to clock your laps around a track in your car :D

What about TRON?

[bigjnsa500]

Why try and do this with Linux when TRON is already the most widely used operating system for millions of devices? Or is it just the geek factor of knowing you're buying a car with a penguin inside?

Re:What about TRON?

[belmolis]

One factor may be that TRON is basically a real-time embedded OS, whereas the applications for which automotive Linux is intended are not subject to real-time constraints. I don't know TRON very well, but it is likely easier to write code for a non real-time OS than for TRON. Another factor may have to do with internationalizing textual interfaces. Linux supports Unicode. The last I knew, TRON used only its own competing encoding and did not support Unicode. (I know that TRON fans consider the TRON encoding superior. Even if they are right, Unicode has received much more support outside of Japan so Unicode is probably a better bet for the automotive market.) A non-technical factor may be that TRON is Japanese. There may be a bit of the NIH syndrome at work.

Driver not recognized

[mekanizer]

This driver is not recognized... and it was the first time Linux crashed something.

HA!-Features.

[Anonymous Coward]

" Your Corola has been rooted!"

You have to recompile your car to get the power windows to work.

You have to download binary drivers to get the advanced dash features to work.

RTFOM is necessary before starting the car.

Telematics

[OneNonly]

Was expecting this device / software to be for general control of car systems (engine performance, monitoring etc) but from here:

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6531324140.html

What is "telematics"?

Telematics is a fairly new word sometimes defined as the combination of telecommunications and computing, or, alternatively, "telemetry" (radio-based instrumentation) and "informatics" (information management using statistics and computers).

Automotive telematics, then, is the application of telematics to the automotive market. Metrowerks lists examples of automotive telematics that include:

* Call center services such as GM OnStar
* In-car navigation and guidance systems
* Car/cellphone integration (for example, for hands-free operation through the radio and a dash-mounted microphone)
* XM radio and Becker Online Pro
* Fleet management systems such as Qualcomm Omnitracs

What automotive telematics is not

Automotive telematics does not include areas of automotive computing that involve powertrain management (such as fuel-injection microcontrollers), or what Metrowerks terms "body/safety/chassis" computing applications. These applications are typically based on proprietary process-based real-time OSes such as QNX, VxWorks, AE, LynxOS and others.

Re:If Operating Systems Drove Your Car to the Stor

[Anonymous Coward]

Suse Linux:

You start kdestination and type the first few letters of the store name in the dialog box. A list of potential matching destinations pops up. You click on the one you want, and after clicking on the conformation, you arrive instantaneously at the store via the kwormhole daemon.

Gentoo Automotive

[ortcutt]

You get your car home and wait 2 days for "emerge system" to finish.

Multiple versions

[Syberghost]

Gentoo: when you receive the car, you have to push the "compile" button and wait two days to drive it.

Every time you change the oil you must do this again.

Contribute yours!

Re:One problem-Safety by suing.

[Kiryat Malachi]

Or, you know, engineers who don't want people to DIE because they didn't test their product.

Thanks for trivializing our morals, ass.

Re:If it was Windows...

[Kiryat Malachi]

Windows doesn't "power" any cars; it runs some telematics systems, but it definitely doesn't run any EMS systems I'm aware of (and I work for a large powertrain electronics supplier, so I have some knowledge here).

Most EMS' I've seen run on OSEK (DC particularly likes OSEK) or VxWorks. A few run on home-written RTOSes (mostly written by Russian coders).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:QNX

[Nutria]

QNX is based off BSD.

QNX is a small RTOS with a micro-kernel architecture and a message-passing structure (that has big libraries on top of it, to make it feel like Unix)

BSD is an interactive, time-sharing system that was designed on VAXen for a serial terminal environment.

Thus, QNX & BSD are about as different as BSD and OS/360 are (but for much different reasons, of course).