The Automotive Virtual Platform Specification (first published version here, and look here for the ongoing working draft) is a collaborative work with an open source license, intended to be the common specification for compatible implementations of virtualization platforms for automotive.

It promotes device virtualization standards like VIRTIO in order to require common APIs that Hypervisors should provide, and complements this by defining other aspects of a virtual platform that VIRTIO cannot cover by itself.  Those are things like boot protocol and other general platform requirements.  The project also analyzes how and when to use hardware-assisted virtualization support while balancing this with the portability goals, for example at which times other methods may supersede emulation and paravirtualization approaches.

Those who are working on this specification (JOIN US!) believe it can be a very useful and important basis the automotive industry and we tend to get the same positive feedback from OEMs, Hypervisor vendors and independent technologists (although with the concern that it is challenging to do).

It is a great, and achievable, goal but the specification doesn't write itself...

If you believe improving the state of virtualization in automotive is important, the team would like to invite you to join us in the new year.  Don't miss the chance to give your personal and your company's input on this important part of the automotive technology stack.  We CAN have better and clearer requirements, more portability, and less integration hassles for multiple operating systems and multiple hypervisor implementations, if we work together on automotive virtualization.

The meeting is held every Monday at 10.00 AM CET and the work is open to everyone, members and non-members alike, so just get involved. If the time slot does not suit you, let us know and we can renegotiate the meeting times with everyone who is interested.  You can find the invitation on the genivi-projects@lists.genivi.org mailing list (check the archives, and subscribe), or contact Gunnar Andersson, GENIVI Technical Lead directly (gandersson at genivi dot org).

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