Wind River introduces its next-generation software framework for connected and autonomous cars

CES, LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Jan. 8, 2019 – Wind River®, a leader in delivering IoT software to critical infrastructure, has announced enhancements to the Wind River Chassis portfolio of safe and secure automotive software. The latest updates to the Chassis portfolio include the integration with Wind River Titanium Cloud virtualization software that delivers high reliability and ultra-low latency to support the rigorous requirements of the world’s most demanding computing and communications networks.

Autonomous driving, like other emerging computing applications, will usher in the need to process high volumes of data at faster speeds while avoiding the risk of downtime. Autonomous cars must constantly sense and communicate with the world around them and make complex calculations in an instant, and as a result a vehicle’s computing needs will become highly intensive.

“The industry is moving beyond early pilot programs to actual commercial deployments. That means technology must extend past ‘what can be done’ to arrive at ‘what should be done’ to reach scale. Technology should do more than match functional requirements; it needs to support the business of automotive,” said Marques McCammon, vice president of Automotive at Wind River. “By marrying our Chassis software framework with Titanium Cloud, we’re contemplating compute—from the car to the cloud—as one system.”

Traditional approaches to tackle increasing complexity, such as adding more computing hardware or simply ruggedizing fragile supercomputers inside cars, could drive up the cost of vehicle production to unreasonable levels. Several challenges can be addressed if cars offload some of the computing strain from the car and move it to the cloud. Designing cars to successfully leverage edge cloud computing can change the cost structure of next-generation vehicles and deliver the low-latency and reliable communications required for autonomous driving.

McCammon continues, “In order for autonomous driving to reach mass production, it will require ultra-low latency and dynamic compute architectures for the cloud as well as in the car. Edge cloud computing will demand flexible infrastructures and the deployment of dynamic applications, along with intensive compute wherever and whenever needed. The combination of our automotive and carrier grade virtualization technologies can provide a flexible and secure cloud-based infrastructure that can be deployed anywhere in the network.”