Industry News
Toyota develops own operating system for automotive electronics
1st June 2006
Toyota has begun developing its own operating system (OS) to handle in-car information and control systems such as navigation, telematics and driving support. Under joint development with the Centre for Embedded Computing Systems of Nagoya University, an organisation for collaboration between research-based industries and academia, the OS is expected to be launched in 2010.
Toyota has defined the future automotive terminal as including a single multi-core microprocessor, supporting parallel execution of the information systems OS and the control systems OS. The joint effort with Nagoya University is on the information systems OS, and functions to link that to the control systems OS. The information systems OS is being developed from a Unix base.
The project will not define a single processor, but open the way for multi-vendor product selection. The information OS will implement a network protocol and therefore potentially create security risks, so Toyota's plans call for a firewall function to permit only known-safe communication between the operating systems.
Toyota hopes to make the results of the research available to other automotive and terminal manufacturers via the Japan Automotive Software Platform and Architecture (JasPar) group, a standards organisation. The first step is the submission to JasPar of a proposal for a working group to consider automotive terminal OS specifications.
Toyota believes that an in-house-developed OS for both information and control systems will assure safety, help control the costs of software development for ECUs and promote application software re-use.
(Nikkei Electronics Asia, June)
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