The Fast and the Curious: Safety-conscious Red Hat eyes continuously certified Linux platform for motors
(2021/04/28)
- Reference: 1619604852
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/28/red_hat_linux_cars/
- Source link:
IBM tentacle Red Hat has waded into the world of automobiles with the intent of attaching wheels to a continuously certified Linux platform.
The company has signed up safety outfit [1]exida in its goal to deliver a version of Linux that is both certified for safety for the automobile industry while also designed for continuous updates throughout its lifecycle.
[2]
It is a scary thought, but while this hack's transport of choice is an ancient, first-generation Volkswagen Golf with little more than a fusebox at the heart of its electrics, modern vehicles are more like mobile data centres these days, once one takes into account driver assistance functions as well as the plethora of infotainment on offer.
Red Hat's plan is to go down the [3]ISO 26262 route to reassure vendors that its code is a better bet than the proprietary components at work today.
Sure, the company admits that the "intentionally slow components... maximise risk reduction and minimize mistakes" but hey, open innovation is cool too. The company plans to combine its experience of secure computing at scale with functional safety to find a home within the automobile system lifecycle.
[4]
Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit, rolled out the inevitable "edge" and "hybrid cloud" keywords with the reassurance: "This evolution doesn't change the ever-present demand for greater reliability and functional safety, which extends to the software backbone of next-generation cars, all connected by edge computing and the open hybrid cloud."
SUSE plots edgier Kubernetes with Linux behind the wheel [5]READ MORE
Chiras went on: "By working with exida, we now intend to bring our expertise and the capabilities of the world's leading enterprise Linux platform to the automotive industry with the first Linux-based, continuously certified road vehicle operating system."
Red Hat is not the first Linux player to turn its gaze to that most edgy of edge devices: the automobile. SUSE told The Register [6]last year that it hoped its wares would turn up in vehicles before long. Just last week it [7]reaffirmed its partnership with automotive software supplier [8]Elektrobit to make software sharing the SUSE Linux Enterprise codebase available to motor manufacturers.
[9]
Competition is a good thing, and Red Hat's focus on functional safety is to be applauded. The car in front might well end up have a Chameleon or Fedora badge on the back.
Ours, sadly, continues to simply leave a sad little puddle of oil on the garage floor. A continuously updateable Linux under the bonnet is unlikely to fix that any time soon. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.exida.com/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YImGnQv0PplggESGVfP8ngAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.iso.org/standard/43464.html
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YImGnQv0PplggESGVfP8ngAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/24/suse_rancher_kubernetes_edge/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/24/suse_rancher_kubernetes_edge/
[7] https://www.suse.com/c/new-horizons-for-suse-and-elektrobit-partnership-in-automotive/
[8] https://www.elektrobit.com/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YImGnQv0PplggESGVfP8ngAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The company has signed up safety outfit [1]exida in its goal to deliver a version of Linux that is both certified for safety for the automobile industry while also designed for continuous updates throughout its lifecycle.
[2]
It is a scary thought, but while this hack's transport of choice is an ancient, first-generation Volkswagen Golf with little more than a fusebox at the heart of its electrics, modern vehicles are more like mobile data centres these days, once one takes into account driver assistance functions as well as the plethora of infotainment on offer.
Red Hat's plan is to go down the [3]ISO 26262 route to reassure vendors that its code is a better bet than the proprietary components at work today.
Sure, the company admits that the "intentionally slow components... maximise risk reduction and minimize mistakes" but hey, open innovation is cool too. The company plans to combine its experience of secure computing at scale with functional safety to find a home within the automobile system lifecycle.
[4]
Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit, rolled out the inevitable "edge" and "hybrid cloud" keywords with the reassurance: "This evolution doesn't change the ever-present demand for greater reliability and functional safety, which extends to the software backbone of next-generation cars, all connected by edge computing and the open hybrid cloud."
SUSE plots edgier Kubernetes with Linux behind the wheel [5]READ MORE
Chiras went on: "By working with exida, we now intend to bring our expertise and the capabilities of the world's leading enterprise Linux platform to the automotive industry with the first Linux-based, continuously certified road vehicle operating system."
Red Hat is not the first Linux player to turn its gaze to that most edgy of edge devices: the automobile. SUSE told The Register [6]last year that it hoped its wares would turn up in vehicles before long. Just last week it [7]reaffirmed its partnership with automotive software supplier [8]Elektrobit to make software sharing the SUSE Linux Enterprise codebase available to motor manufacturers.
[9]
Competition is a good thing, and Red Hat's focus on functional safety is to be applauded. The car in front might well end up have a Chameleon or Fedora badge on the back.
Ours, sadly, continues to simply leave a sad little puddle of oil on the garage floor. A continuously updateable Linux under the bonnet is unlikely to fix that any time soon. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.exida.com/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YImGnQv0PplggESGVfP8ngAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.iso.org/standard/43464.html
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YImGnQv0PplggESGVfP8ngAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/24/suse_rancher_kubernetes_edge/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/24/suse_rancher_kubernetes_edge/
[7] https://www.suse.com/c/new-horizons-for-suse-and-elektrobit-partnership-in-automotive/
[8] https://www.elektrobit.com/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YImGnQv0PplggESGVfP8ngAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: A potentially insuperable problem
Steve Davies 3
You make a lot of good points
Yet, Volvo/Geely have gone with Google Android in its EV's. I'd love to know what the interrupt latency of that package is when compared to a dedicated RTOS.
Perhaps single digit microsecond responses to external events aren't needed in a car? (sic)
A potentially insuperable problem
Using a conventional multi-tasking OS for time or reliability critical applications is always going to be less than optimum as there are too many things going on under the hood. When I designed such systems in the distant past I always went for bare metal implementations, using multiple physical processing blocks where necessary for concurrency. The result was that nothing other than the tasks in hand consumed resources or interfered with the primary functions. Of late, as it's been harder to find affordable bare metal programmers, I've had to resort to "high level" approaches. A current Java project is causing headaches in time critical sections as neither the abstracted timing sources are entirely predictable (being platform dependent) nor is the time taken by the calling code consistent due to cycle stealing by other threads (mostly OS threads).
The advantage of easier development and standardised readily available platforms is to quite an extent countered by lack of certainty at execution time and, incidentally, massive overkill in hardware resources and OS complexity in the background.