Tech Giants Google, Blackberry, and Qualcomm Collaborate in designing Next-Gen Automotive Cockpits
The availability of a new QNX Hypervisor and VIRTIO-based reference design was recently announced by Blackberry Limited. The design is intended to be used to make an Android Automotive design virtual, and it works on the 3rd generation Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform that helps deliver an exciting and premium experience in automobile cockpits. It also gives the market a glimpse into the future.
The new design marks a collaboration between Blackberry Ltd, Alphabet Inc, and Qualcomm Inc. Shortly after the new design and collaboration was announced, Blackberry shares were traded higher at $9.69 in the premarket session on Wednesday, a 3.75% increase in share price.
A current trend in the automotive industry is one in which disparate functionalities in car cabins are consolidated via heads-up displays, infotainment, instrument clusters, and single, unified digital cockpit architectures. This type of architecture is powered by one extremely potent system-on-chip(SoC). It uses a mixed-criticality architecture that improves the integration of car cabin features .
With the new design, a new type of cockpit has been envisioned that provides customer solutions based on a singular unified passenger experience that reduces overall production cost at the same time.
QNX’s VIRTIO implementation combined with the QNX Hypervisor used for the digital equipment cluster facilitates the running of an Android OS through automobile software, out of the box and without need for modifications. With these technologies , deployed field systems can be upgraded to newer Android Automotive OS versions without fuss as soon as they become available.
The system also facilitates rapid booting and sharing of graphics, audio, video streaming, and USB connections. Touchscreen functionality and car HAL sharing are also projected to improve, and OEMs are expected to make the ultimate cockpit experience available to users soon. QNX’s Superior Virtualization Frameworks include the QNX cockpit reference design, which is already available.
The implementation of the VIRTIO interface is not standardized, even though the VIRTIO interface is. As a result, Blackberry’s QNX reference was extended to allow the sharing of dynamic graphics between Android Automotive OS apps in the digital instrument cluster and the infotainment screen .
There is also shared Vulkan draw stream support and audio management that runs system-wide to manage all sounds in vehicles holistically. 25 existing virtual devices are available in the QNX Hypervisor products family, and the Blackberry QNX VIRTIO implementation adds 10 more virtual devices to them.
Blackberry Limited
Blackberry’s mobile devices used to be hugely popular and made the company well-known, but these devices aren’t the only things Blackberry produces . The company also provides smart security software and services to governments and corporations across the globe, and has secured more than 500 million endpoints and 195 million vehicles.
Blackberry is based in Waterloo, Ontario, and the organization leverages the power of AI and machine learning to provide innovative solutions regarding security, data privacy, encryption, endpoint management, and embedded systems. The company’s mission is to secure a connected future you can trust.
