60-second interview

The Open Source ideal continues to grow core support at the heart of the applications mainstream, and recently it has been widening the inroads it´s been making into the automotive sector. The in-vehicle operating system platform space has been dominated by Microsoft Auto OS, QNX´s RTOS, and other proprietary solutions. Now it is being challenged by Linux-based initiatives that could bring to the car and truck the same flexibility enjoyed by home and office. Over the last three years, Linux has been stealthily establishing itself as a de facto operating system for a clutch of in-vehicle applications, most notably so-called infotainment systems that support and link audio, telemetric, and telephony functionality. Freescale Semiconductor addresses this market from the embedded systems direction: its Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is a real-time operating system based on the Linux 2.6 kernel offering a Linux software solution. In April 2008 Freescale introduced its MPC5123 dual-core processor for embedded Linux applications that comes bundled with a developers starter kit.Then Wind River´s Linux Platform for Infotainment will offer pre-integration with third-party networking and multimedia applications. Applications so far signed-up include speech-recognition and speech-to-text technologies by Nuance Communications, Bluetooth and advanced echo-cancellation and noise reduction solutions by Parrot, music management and automatic playlisting technologies by Gracenote (just bought by Sony), multimedia networking solutions by SMSC, and DVD playback by Corel´s LinDVD.