With the promise of the connected car becoming a reality through broad deployment of multimedia-capable mobile wireless technologies, the automotive industry is recognizing the opportunity to deliver new value-added services through a car’s entertainment system or head unit. The main function of a head unit is enabling a variety of functions such as navigation, radio, DVD players, climate control, Bluetooth, and so on. Based on PC standards, an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) platform offers even more optimizations for the automotive environment.

The framework or stack for an IVI platform consists of software and hardware components with well-defined interfaces between them. This allows developers to boot an Operating System (OS) supporting the key application functionality of an automotive head unit, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Software and hardware components in an Intel-based IVI platform enable application functionality in an automotive head unit. (click graphic to zoom by 1.7x)

Regarding the overall IVI platform stack, the key challenges involve integrating or seamlessly porting various applications and middleware to the automotive-specific user interface standards. The ecosystem for this software includes Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), OS Vendors (OSVs), and the Linux open source community.

ISVs and OSVs can provide powerful Human Machine Interface (HMI) tools and development kits to enable easy OEM HMI customization across their product lines. Third-party hardware vendors also can provide various automotive-specific I/O systems to allow simple automotive OEM product differentiation.

Usage model

Well-connected IVI platforms that blend embedded and vehicle-independent services and content with bidirectional communication capabilities do not exist today. While a range of nomadic device services and proprietary embedded vehicle systems can be found in some segments, these discrete services are not operating within a comprehensive OEM-defined environment. Figure 2 outlines some of these challenges.

Figure 2: Because embedded and vehicle-independent services do not operate within an OEM-defined environment, using IVI platforms presents several challenges. (click graphic to zoom by 1.3x)

Global automakers now realize that customers desire connectivity to content and services not possible to achieve with existing business models and currently used embedded systems. In addition, automakers today know that they can leverage the expertise, knowledge, or business structure from other embedded platforms to provide the hardware, applications, data, or communications conduits to support the breadth of needs.

Major automakers are exploring ways to deliver the content and services customers want in their vehicles. This exploration is primarily driven by advancements in communications technologies and protocols such as cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi/WiMAX, and dedicated short-range communications.

Although automakers would like to provide content and services, they can incur huge risks being first to market if other automakers do not participate. This creates the dichotomy of balancing confidential efforts with the need for industry-wide, cross-vehicle, and cross-brand solutions to capture the interest of large service providers.

Because vehicle makers have engaged Tier 1 suppliers to develop, integrate, and deliver components, the value chain historically has been straightforward and limited in scope. With the need to provide a means for customers to communicate with vehicles, automakers now must become directly familiar with all of the stakeholder domains that affect this larger ecosystem.

Automakers can leverage several commodity software and hardware components, leaving OEMs to focus on adding value. To capitalize on this potential, strong partnerships between key providers of devices, infrastructure, and applications will be essential for infotainment services to be accepted on a broad scale. OEMs must develop a solution that supports traditional automotive requirements including availability, reliability, affordability, and desirable features for consumers. Therefore, key providers must implement an industry segment alignment to distribute the cost of developing and marketing innovative connected services. As consumer and business awareness grows, more services can be offered at prices acceptable to the market.

Challenges and opportunities

The following synopsis offers an overview of the challenges involved in developing automotive systems and describes how IVI platforms can address these issues. The original article discusses many more challenges and opportunities in greater technical depth.

Platform boot challenge

Drivers now expect an instant power-on experience similar to what they can achieve using TVs and other consumer appliances. An Intel-based IVI platform offers subsecond cold boot times to help facilitate this user experience when the ignition is started. Typical boot latency goals are illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Intel-based IVI platform boot latencies help meet consumer expectations for instant power-on experiences. (click graphic to zoom by 1.4x)

A boot solution that is low cost, has smaller code size, offers low boot latencies, and is platform-agnostic creates opportunities for ISVs, OSVs, and automotive OEMs to provide creative solutions with their own IP, making their products competitive and unique. In addition, this boot solution allows device vendors to provide hardware IP that is self-initializing, thereby relieving the boot software from doing the same work and freeing up some time to improve latencies, such as initializing and activating the CAN interface.

The challenge that still must be addressed is developing a single solution that can boot both a shrink-wrap OS requiring PC compatibility and an embedded OS, but with the flexibility of allowing platform differentiation and low boot latencies. OSVs can come up with innovative optimizations within the OS boot flows, such as replacing graphics hardware initialization in firmware with early OS initialization for the same.

Graphics and applications enabling opportunities

High-level industry-standard APIs such as OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and D3D are available to support a wide range of application development opportunities. By using a graphics device with full support for desktop OSs and industry-standard APIs, an IVI platform can make it easy to develop custom HMIs and integrate applications familiar to system users.

Uniting the IVI market

The scope of IVI opportunities will further expand with the wide availability of WiMAX/4G infrastructure for the connected car usage model. In considering the combined technical and market requirements in automotive infotainment, leading automobile manufacturers and suppliers announced in March 2009 the formation of the GENIVI Alliance (www.genivi.org), a nonprofit organization committed to driving the development and broad adoption of an open source IVI reference platform.

By removing the costly duplication in specifications and lower-level software functions, automakers can develop new services desired by automotive customers, resulting in new sources of revenue. Through the work of key technical working groups, vetted specifications and reference implementations as well as many other elements planned for release will be available to all members for commercial development.

The GENIVI Alliance, which is expected to reach up to 150 companies by 2010, will unite industry-leading automotive, consumer electronics, communications, application development, and entertainment companies investing in the IVI market to align requirements, deliver reference implementations, offer certification programs, and foster a vibrant IVI community with the purpose of removing waste from the development cycle.

Suresh Marisetty is a software and systems architect at Intel Corporation, where he has worked for 20 years enabling various end-to-end Intel architecture server, desktop, mobile, and embedded platform technology ingredients across the industry in close collaboration with OEM customers, OS vendors, and standards bodies. He currently holds 17 patents and has written more than half a dozen internal and external papers on various topics. Suresh’s current focus areas include security, manageability, low-latency boot solutions, and end-to-end IVI platform software architecture.

Durgesh Srivastava is Principal Engineer for Intel’s Embedded and Communication Group, where he drives architectures for low-power embedded Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). He is also involved in debug hooks architecture, power reduction, platform power management, CPU uncore/MCH, memory subsystem architecture, and silicon debug.

Joel Andrew Hoffmann is strategic market development manager for Intel’s In-Vehicle Infotainment Group, where he leads automotive business developments in wireless networking and enterprise IT solutions. He is also responsible for managing Intel’s infotainment vision, which includes spearheading Intel’s efforts with GENIVI.

Intel Corporation
www.intel.com