Wind River, Intel Partner For In-Vehicle Infotainment

Wind River Systems on Tuesday said it has partnered with Intel in building a Linux platform for running in-vehicle infotainment systems.

The open source platform will be optimized to run on Intel's Atom processor, which the chipmaker introduced in April. Atom is Intel's downsized, low-power chip for driving Web browsing and other applications in mobile Internet devices and other handheld computers.

Wind River plans to make specifications and code from the platform available in August to the open source community through Moblin.org, a site for software vendors and Linux users to collaborate, share applications, and contribute code.

The vendor's code running on top of Atom will enable "the development of open infotainment platforms that are based on interoperable, standards-based hardware and software components," Wind River said in a statement. In this way, the two companies hope to jump-start a rich ecosystem around open source infotainment systems.

"Not only will this accelerate the pace at which new and compelling automotive applications are developed, we believe this will also allow new business models to emerge in the infotainment market," said John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at Wind River.

For the automotive industry, an open source platform offers no vendor lock-in and broader options for consumer electronics integration and for customizing systems. "Automotive manufacturers face a tremendous challenge integrating rapidly evolving multimedia requirements into vehicles that typically have long development cycles," said Ton Steenman, VP of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.

Companies within the automotive industry supporting the initiative include BMW Group, Bosch, Delphi, and Magneti Marelli.

The Wind River/Intel collaboration is sure to have its competitors. Microsoft, for example, is building in-vehicle infotainment systems based on Windows.