On 6 March, GENIVI received word that the below mentioned Automotive Cybersecurity Event was officially postponed to 22-24 June.  Since then, the leadership of the GENIVI Security Team has decided to also postpone the planned face-to-face workshop and reception to align with the June schedule.  As logistics for this workshop are finalized, GENIVI will announce the new schedule and location (if changed).  

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Vehicle cybersecurity continues to be a very hot topic in the industry and third-party events seem to be a great place to advance the dialogue about how automakers and suppliers should collaborate on standard approaches for reducing security threats. 

The GENIVI Security Team has chosen the week of the upcoming Automotive Cybersecurity Event in Detroit (30 March - 1 April) to continue the discussions started during last November's workshop during the GENIVI Technical Summit.  The Security Team, under the leadership of Joby Jester from Irdeto, is planning three activities during the days of this event.  The Automotive Cybersecurity Event, presented by IQPC, is a for-pay event and attendees must register to attend here. 

On 30 March (8:30 am), as part of the "training day" of the IQPC program, GENIVI will lead a workshop entitled "Product Security Evaluation Workshop - How to Get Ready for ISO/SAE 21434".  Future rules and regulations like ISO/SAE 21434 will require automotive manufacturers to perform and document cybersecurity risk assessments for each product.  This session will help participants interpret and implement this emerging standard.

Also on 30 March (2:00- 5:00 pm) in Novi (suburb of Detroit), the GENIVI Security Team will hold a face-to-face workshop and reception with the following agenda:

• Introduction to the GENIVI Security Team
• ISO 21434 - How to Handle a Changing Cybersecurity Landscape (Bill Mazzara, FCA, will be a guest speaker)
• Cybersecurity Requirements - How to Keep Security Controls Updated
• Collaboration - Is this the Future Model of Automotive Cybersecurity?
• Interactive Discussions, Feedback and Opportunities
• Walk-in Topics from Attendees
• Wrap-Up and Social Networking with Food/Beverage.

There is no charge for this GENIVI-hosted gathering (held at the Sidecar Slider Bar restaurant in Novi), but for planning purposes, GENIVI requests registering here (use passcode "collaboration").  To be clear, this workshop is not directly associated with the IQPC event.

Returning to the IQPC event program in downtown Detroit, on 31 March (1:30pm), GENIVI will moderate a panel entitled, "A 'Commodity Approach' Toward Automotive Cybersecurity".  This panel seeks to answer the question, "Can automakers and suppliers benefit from a shared, commodity approach toward delivering relevant cybersecurity technologies?"  Cybersecurity experts from GM, Visteon and Harman will discuss how to engage more openly on cybersecurity challenges.  This panel along with the workshop planned on on the morning of 30 March are for pay activities of the IQPC Automotive Cybersecurity Event in downtown Detroit.  Registration for this event can be found here. 

Questions about the GENIVI Security Team activities can be sent to joby dot jester at irdeto dot com or to gandersson at genivi dot org.  Questions about the offsite workshop and reception can be sent to mikenunnery at comcast dot net.  You can also email Mike If you are a GENIVI member and want to benefit from a 20% discount for the IQPC event negotiated by GENIVI.  

If you are local to the Detroit/Novi area or have plans to participate in the IQPC event, please make sure to include these GENIVI-led activities in your plans.

The news about the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is changing daily leaving many of us with concern for those infected and for the potential of the virus increasingly affecting our business and personal lives.  Rest assured that GENIVI leadership is tracking developments and commits to consistent communication about upcoming gatherings like the GENIVI All Member Meeting, scheduled for 12-14 May 2020 in Leipzig, Germany.

Until GENIVI has reason to postpone or cancel the event, which will be communicated immediately if that decision is made, the All Member meeting will proceed as planned.

GENIVI recognizes that many organizations already have travel restrictions associated with the COVID-19 virus in place and these may become more or less restrictive as time goes on.  

Please know that we are monitoring the situation and health notices closely.  The health and safety of our members is our highest priority and we will continue to monitor this dynamic situation and communicate any new or significant updates.

Please contact me (scrumb at genivi dot org) with any questions or concerns about the upcoming GENIVI All Member meeting or other planned GENIVI gatherings at related industry events.

I love when things are made simple for me.  Maybe I'm lazy, but I love summaries.  So this blog is about summaries - the top five things in GENIVI-Land that you should know about.  So, here goes:

1. The All Member Meeting (12-14 May) is coming and you should decide to attend soon.  Visit this blog for more information, get registered and reserve your hotel as room blocks close early.
2. GENIVI will actively participate in the upcoming IQPC Automotive Cybersecurity Detroit event (30 March - 1 April 2020) and the TU-Automotive Detroit event (2-4 June 2020).  The GENIVI Networking Reception at the TU-Automotive event is a must-make event with hundreds in attendance. (See #3)
3. If your company is looking to represent your product or services to a highly targeted gathering of automotive contacts, consider sponsoring or showcasing at one or more of our upcoming events (AMM, TU-Automotive Detroit).  Contact Mike Nunnery (mike at comcast dot net) for more information.
4. If you weren't able to attend the recent Automotive World webinar presenting the GENIVI work on an Automotive Virtualization Platform (a standards-based approach for deploying hypervisors in a vehicle), visit the AW site to get the slides and listen to the recording.
5. If you have a session idea for the upcoming All Member Meeting program, please contact me (scrumb at genivi dot org).  The program is coming together but we want to consider your ideas too.  Marketing pitches are not appropriate for the stage, but are welcome in our showcase room.

Short and sweet.  Enjoy!

Beyond IVI and into the Connected Cockpit

On 12-14 May 2020, GENIVI will gather for its next member meeting to explore trends affecting vehicle software solutions and to engage in discussions related to the expanded scope that includes integration of multiple operating environments present in the centralized and connected vehicle cockpit.  Non-members interested in this expanded scope and in participating in GENIVI projects are also welcome to attend.

Anchoring the technical program will be updates and working sessions of active GENIVI projects including:

• Android™ Automotive SIG
• Cloud and Connected Services project
• Hypervisor project
• Adaptive AUTOSAR integration activities
• Security Team.

A new project under consideration in the area of in-vehicle payments may also hold its first official meeting during the event. 

In addition to these technical activities, invited speakers will present industry trends affecting the future automotive software landscape.  And finally, during the evening of the 13th, GENIVI will hold its very popular Showcase and Reception where members can present their products and services to event attendees while enjoying light snacks and drinks.  Mike Nunnery (mikenunnery at comcast dot net) is taking member inquiries for event sponsorship and showcase participation so please contact him directly.

Coming off of a highly productive 2019 and a very successful set of activities at CES 2020, GENIVI is looking forward to bringing the community together to hear updates, recruit participation for new and active projects and continue the great networking that GENIVI events are know for.  

The event will be held at the Marriott Leipzig Hotel, located just a block away from the Leipzig central train station. 

Event registration details and details for securing a hotel room can be found here.

Wards Auto Video

I can't help but to share an excellent video shot by Wards Auto during the GENIVI CES 2020 Showcase and Reception.  The brief video does two things really well.  First, it highlights that the work of GENIVI has moved "beyond IVI" and into the centralized and connected vehicle cockpit.  Second, the footage shows the popularity of this event, which has become an essential stop for many automotive stakeholders during the week of CES.  Take 93 seconds of your day to take a look at how GENIVI continues to bring together the global automotive industry at events like CES (link to video: https://t.co/IcyT4CtEkG?amp=1).  And feel free to pass this link on to your colleagues.

"Watching" this Blog

The GENIVI blog has a feature that you can "turn on" to proactively make you aware of when a new blog post has occurred.  For those who have credentials to log into the wiki (more on how to get those in a second), once you have authenticated, a link appears on the top right of the blog page that says, "Watch this Blog” and pressing it will result in notifications coming to the email associated with your login, whenever a new blog is posted.  This feature is only available for those who have login credentials to this public wiki (which is different than the member-only wiki).  If your credentials do not work or you have forgotten them, please email help at genivi dot org for support in getting your credentials sorted.  GENIVI intends to regularly post important information on this blog so save yourself some effort and hit the "Watch this blog" link today.

GENIVI invites you to learn more about a recent GENIVI deliverable on hypervisors and virtualization in a vehicle context through an upcoming webinar, “Hypervisors in the vehicle: A standards-based approach to virtualization”.  The webinar will be held on 13 February at 1700 Central Europe Time (11:00 am US EST) in partnership with Automotive World.  Attendees of the webinar will hear from Tero Salminen, Senior Director Product, Virtualization at OpenSynergy and GENIVI Technical Lead Gunnar Andersson, about the benefits of standardization in the use of in-vehicle hypervisors.

Hypervisors and virtualization solutions are prevalent in IT and have found their way into many vertical industries.  Some hypervisor solutions are also being deployed in vehicle systems, but do these deployments allow the flexibility and interoperability that standards-based approaches typically offer for other software in the vehicle? Is there a need for a more standards-based approach for deploying hypervisors in the vehicle that has the potential to ensure that automotive requirements are met, to reduce risk and concerns among adopters of virtualization, promote portability, and to minimize system integration effort?  These and many other questions will be answered during this informative webinar.

To register for this webinar, please visit the Automotive World webinar site.  And stay tuned to other GENIVI webinars in coming months hosted by Automotive World. 

In this blog, I will highlight an important software project funded by GENIVI and completed in 2019 that aids in the interoperability of Adaptive AUTOSAR systems with systems running Franca IDL, an interface description language used by CommonAPI and other software solutions in the vehicle.

The tool, nicknamed FARACON,  uses model-to-model transformation to achieve a compatible code generation on both sides of ARA::COM (the communication layer of Adaptive AUTOSAR) and Franca IDL.  When combined with CommonAPI bindings and ARA::COM runtime, this achieves a runtime translation between ECUs. The alternative to this would be a manual translation that is not only tedious, but prone to human errors.

Using such a tool makes it possible to have a specification in a single format (GENIVI proposes Franca IDL for this), and yet to use the full advantage of both technologies on both sides of the communication.  Enabling interoperability between heterogeneous systems using model-to-model transformation methods can improve software quality and reduce development time and engineering costs.

The FARACON tool implements transformations from Adaptive AUTOSAR models to Franca IDL and vice versa. These transformations can be used as part of any current Eclipse IDE. For build automation and Continuous Integration (CI), it is also useful to deploy the transformations as a command-line tool.  

The goal of the automatic transformations is to apply code generation by AUTOSAR-compatible code generators as well as Franca-compatible generators (e.g., CommonAPI C++) in a way that leads to transparent communication between both systems at runtime. Therefore, the tooling is based on a proper mapping between Adaptive AUTOSAR concepts and Franca IDL concepts. For example, each operation on an AUTOSAR service interface is mapped to a method in Franca IDL.

The diagram above shows how the transformation tooling interacts with the code generators. The generated code on the AUTOSAR and Linux-based subsystems (like GENIVI) is using the SOME/IP protocol for communication. As the subsystems are integrated on model level, the communication is automatically compatible.

A clear advantage of following this approach is that there is no need to define the same interface twice in Franca IDL and AUTOSAR ARXML. This reduces errors coming from manually maintaining the service interfaces by having only one source of origin.

GENIVI is proud to have funded the FARACON tool through Itemis and Version 1.0 (open source licensed), which achieves a near production-ready quality, is available here: https://github.com/GENIVI/franca_ara_tools.  The delivery of this useful tool to the industry is one evidence that GENIVI has moved beyond IVI and is actively working on the integration of multiple operating systems in the connected and centralized vehicle cockpit.

Many thanks to GENIVI members Itemis, Renault and Visteon for their work to oversee, develop, test and publish the tool.

Welcome to the New Year and to a new model of communicating about GENIVI plans, activities and deliverables.  GENIVI is phasing out the newsletter and will begin using this blog (coordinated with email blasts) to inform members of the alliance and nonmembers about important topics.  Future blogs will be more often and shorter to facilitate a quick read.  Please feel free to pass on a link of this blog to your colleagues to keep them aware of all that is going on in GENIVI.  In this blog, I will briefly describe the awesome outcome of the GENIVI activities at the CES 2020 show and also recap some of the latest deliverables of the alliance.  Stay tuned to this blog for more details in the coming weeks.

CES 2020 Highlights

The best way to describe the outcome of the CES 2020 Showcase and Reception is to reprint a quote from a participating member company that had a table presence at the showcase:

"I wanted to tell you that we absolutely LOVED the GENIVI reception.  My team felt your event ALONE was worth the plane tickets from Finland to CES.  It was a fantastic venue and we had so much interest and traction there...We had a great time and had a lot of great talks and leads."  

I was fortunate to receive many such remarks during the closing of the reception from almost everyone I talked to.  Big kudos to Mike Nunnery (GENIVI Mike) for his hard work planning and executing this event!  Once again it broke all previous records for registration (2,000), actual participation (roughly 1,400),  as well as numbers of sponsors and organizations taking tables during the reception.  This is one way that GENIVI  brings our members together and provides a productive environment for business interactions with a well-qualified audience of automotive decision makers from around the globe.  Pictures of the reception can be found here. 

Two more opportunities for similar interaction are coming, one being the All Member Meeting (targeted for the week of 11 May in a European location TBC) and the TU-Automotive Detroit event (3-4 June).  For details about sponsoring or showcasing at either event, please contact Mike at mikenunnery at comcast.net.  

Two other quick notes on CES 2020.  GENIVI teamed with SAE to produce the Connect2Car program during CES and all the panels coordinated by GENIVI enjoyed full rooms of eager listeners.  John Ellis led a panel on Connected Services and Matt Jones led an interesting discussion on Electrification and Autonomy.  Pictures of these panels can be found here.  

Latest Deliverables from GENIVI

CES 2020 also provided a nice milestone for several GENIVI projects to deliver on work completed in 2019.  This wiki page provides an overview and links to each delivery, but let me highlight a few here.  

Vehicle Data Models - Overview and Gap Analysis

Everyone is talking about vehicle data, but the industry is not aligned on a standard data model or common approach for moving vehicle data to/from the back-end cloud.  Step one in this essential model alignment is to understand existing approaches and the gaps present in them.  The Cloud and Connected Services project recently published a “Vehicle Data Models - Overview and Gap Analysis” that provides readers important information for the future data-oriented strategies of OEMs and their suppliers.  The project now turns toward designing an end-to-end reference architecture during its next "sprint".  At this point, the project is open to members and nonmembers so if you would like to get involved, contact Philippe Robin, GENIVI PMO lead at philippe.robin at technoveo.com.  

Automotive Virtualization Specification 

As I stood at the GENIVI table during the CES reception, I was amazed at the interest in another recent deliverable of the Hypervisor Project, an Automotive Virtualization Specification.  Hypervisors and virtualization solutions are prevalent in IT and have found their way into many vertical industries.  Some hypervisor solutions are also being deployed in vehicle systems, but do these deployments allow the flexibility and interoperability that standards-based approaches typically offer for other software in the vehicle? GENIVI believes that there is a need for a more standards-based approach for deploying hypervisors in the vehicle.  This has the potential to ensure that automotive requirements are met, to reduce risk and concerns among adopters of virtualization, promote portability, and to minimize system integration effort.   This is the motivation behind the Automotive Virtualization Specification, recently delivered by GENIVI (special thanks to OpenSynergy and Gunnar Andersson).  The specification is considered a "release candidate" meaning that you have the opportunity to contribute your thoughts to a final release.  Contact Gunnar to give your input at gandersson at genivi.org. GENIVI will hold a webinar on this subject in mid-February and the details will be announced soon.  

There is so much more to share, but I promised to keep it short.  But stay tuned for our next blog as we will make at least two very important announcements in the days ahead.

All the best in this New Year,

Steve Crumb

Executive Director, GENIVI Alliance

With the recent release of meta-ivi v15.0.x the Genivi Baseline was re-based on Yocto Project 2.6 (Thud). It's therefore a good time to write a blog about support for it and GDP on Renesas R-Car Gen 3.

R-Car Gen 3 Community Yocto BSP v3.15.0/v3.19.0 for YP 2.6 (Thud)

Yocto BSP v3.15.0 was used during the majority of the development cycle for meta-ivi v15.0.x and has therefore received the most testing. At the end of the cycle v3.19.0 was released upstream and I have sanity checked that it works.

At the time of writing the meta-ivi CI and GDP sub-modules point at Yocto BSP v3.15.0. I will be updating both to v3.19.0 soon.

Developer Summary

Documentation

I continue to maintain pages discussing the building of Genivi s/w for R-Car in the meta-ivi Yocto BSP wiki area. From there you can find a link to a new page covering building Genivi 15 for YP 2.6 (Thud).

Genivi Yocto Baseline

I have successfully sanity tested building the 15.0.x Genivi Yocto Baseline using the Community YBSP v3.15.0 and v3.19.0 for Thud on the M3 Starter Kit. Testing of the other boards will follow, but I do not expect any issues and see no reason for you to wait before trying them.

See the Documentation section above on how to build it.

GDP

GDP is in the process of being rebased on Thud in Github PR 231. I have posted Github PR #9 to update GDP to use the R-Car Thud support.

Although we knew that GDP could be built for the Renesas R-Car Gen 3 Salvator-X(S) boards they were not supported in the GDP init mechanism that sets up GDP for you. You typically asked GDP init to setup for one of the R-Car Starter Kit boards and manually made the changes to build for Salvator-X.

Between Gunnar and I we have now added Salvator-X(S) support directly into the init mechanism on the GDP master, 14.0.x-rocko and 14.1.x-sumo branches.

To initiate the build environment for M3 Salvator-X(S) use the command:

source init.sh r-car-m3-salvator-x

To initiate the build environment for H3 Salvator-X(S) use the command:

source init.sh r-car-h3-salvator-x

I have successfully tested the mechanism on M3 Salvator-X and H3 Salvator-XS.

With the recent release of meta-ivi v14.50.x and GDP v14.1 the Genivi platforms were re-based on Yocto Project 2.5 (Sumo). It's therefore a good time to write a blog about support for them on Renesas R-Car Gen 3.

R-Car Gen 3 Community Yocto BSP v3.9.0 for YP 2.5 (Sumo)

Back in August I blogged about the customer Yocto BSP v3.9.0 for YP 2.4 (Rocko). The customer BSP typically updates Yocto Project once a year. To help support the community Renesas is re-basing these releases on Sumo to create a community Yocto BSP.

Developer Summary

Migration Guide

If you wish to use the "click through" licensed gfx/mmp packages that requires no NDA then please download the packages for YBSP v3.9.0 and Wayland 1.14 / Weston 3.0 from the section for YP 2.5 (Sumo) from here.

If you are updating from an earlier BSP version then the new Yocto BSP release introduces updates to various Yocto BSP packages including the kernel, Initial Program Loader (IPL) and u-boot. The kernel and op-tee updates include mitigations for Spectre/Meltdown.

Please flash the updated IPL/u-boot to your board. Instructions for doing that can be found on elinux.org in the "Flashing Firmware" section of the M3 Starter Kit and H3 Starter Kit board pages. For Salvator-X(S) and Ebisu boards please refer to the documentation that came with the customer Yocto BSP.

There has been no change to the example local.confs.

Details of the Yocto BSP changes can be found in the git commit messages. Here is a log between v3.9.0 (Rocko) and v3.9.0 (Sumo) using the github compare function.

The community v.3.9.0 (Sumo) BSP uses the upstream (Poky) Weston 3.0 implementation and therefore only supports the gl-renderer which uses the GPU for h/w acceleration.

The dtb filenames have not changed since the last blog but here is the table again for reference. Please refer to the table below for the correct dtb to use for your board and SoC:

Documentation

I continue to maintain pages discussing the building of Genivi s/w for R-Car in the meta-ivi Yocto BSP wiki area. I have created a new page covering R-Car Gen 3 builds for Genivi-14 (Pulsar) for YP 2.5 (Sumo).

Genivi Yocto Baseline

I have successfully sanity tested building the 14.50.x Genivi Yocto Baseline using the Community YBSP v3.9.0 for Sumo on the M3 and H3 Starter Kits. Testing of the other boards will follow, but I do not expect any issues and see no reason for you to wait before trying them.

See the Documentation section above on how to build it.

GDP

The GDP Master and 14.1.x-sumo branches have been updated to use the Community Yocto BSP v3.9.0 for Sumo. I have also updated the corresponding build instructions of the GDP Master wiki page. Finally, I have successfully sanity tested it on the M3 and H3 Starter Kits. As with the Baseline testing of the other boards will follow.

Some of you may have noticed that the upstream Renesas R-Car Gen 3 Yocto BSP was updated to v3.9.0. With updates to the GDP and Genivi wiki complete, along with initial sanity testing its time for a blog to pull the threads together. So, this blog discusses using it with Genivi-14, the Genivi Yocto Baseline and GDP.

R-Car Gen 3 Yocto BSP v3.9.0

Developer Summary

Migration Guide

If you wish to use the "click through" licensed gfx/mmp packages that requires no NDA then please download the packages for Yocto v3.9.0 and Wayland 1.13 /Weston 2.0 from here.

The new Yocto BSP release introduces updates to various Yocto BSP packages including the kernel, Initial Program Loader (IPL) and u-boot. The kernel and op-tee updates include mitigations for Spectre/Meltdown.

Please flash the updated IPL/u-boot to your board. Instructions for doing that can be found on elinux.org in the "Flashing Firmware" section of the M3 Starter Kit and H3 Starter Kit board pages. For Salvator-X(S) and Ebisu boards please refer to the documentation that came with the customer Yocto BSP.

There has been no change to the example local.confs and no updates to meta-ivi-renesas were required.

Details of the Yocto BSP changes can be found in the git commit messages. Here is a log since v3.7.0 using the github compare function.

Please refer to the table below for the correct dtb to use for your board and SoC:

You can find the migration guide for v3.7.0 and links to earlier releases in my v3.7.0 blog.

Documentation

Historically I have maintained pages discussing the building of Genivi s/w for R-Car in the meta-ivi Yocto BSP wiki area. I have updated the page covering R-Car Gen 3 builds for Genivi-14 to use YBSP v3.9.0.

Genivi Yocto Baseline

I have successfully sanity tested building the 14.0.0 (P-1.0) Genivi Yocto Baseline using Yocto BSP v3.9.0 on the M3 Starter Kit.

See the Documentation section above on how to build it.

GDP

The GDP Master branch has been updated (pull request) to use Yocto BSP v3.9.0. I have also updated the corresponding build instructions of the GDP Master wiki page. Finally, I have successfully sanity tested it on the M3 Starter Kit.

In my earlier blogs I discussed the initial Genivi-14 support using Yocto BSP v3.4.0 and a subsequent update to v3.6.0.

Upstream has updated to Yocto BSP v3.7.0 and this blog discusses using it with Genivi-14, the Genivi Yocto Baseline and GDP.

R-Car Gen 3 Yocto BSP v3.7.0

Developer Summary

Migration Guide

if you wish to use the "click through" licensed gfx/mmp packages that requires no NDA then please download the packages for Yocto v3.7.0 and Wayland 1.13 /Weston 2.0 from here.

The new Yocto BSP release introduces updates to various Yocto BSP packages including the kernel, Initial Program Loader (IPL) and u-boot.

Yocto BSP v3.7.0 introduces a new variable H3_OPTION to local.conf to control the SiP DDR configuration chosen when building the IPL/u-boot for Salvator-XS. See the example local.conf in the Yocto BSP for details. For the H3 Starter Kit the correct setting is chosen for you.

Please flash the updated IPL/u-boot to your board. Instructions for doing that can be found on elinux.org in the "Flashing Firmware" section of the M3 Starter Kit and H3 Starter Kit board pages. For Salvator-X(S) and Ebisu boards please refer to the documentation that came with the customer Yocto BSP.

Details of the Yocto BSP changes can be found in the git commit messages. Here is a log using the github compare function.

Please refer to the table below for the correct dtb to use for your board and SoC:

Documentation

Historically I have maintained pages discussing the building of Genivi s/w for R-Car in the meta-ivi Yocto BSP wiki area. I have updated the page covering R-Car Gen 3 builds for Genivi-14 to use YBSP v3.7.0.

Genivi Yocto Baseline

I have successfully sanity tested building the 14.0.0 (P-1.0) Genivi Yocto Baseline using Yocto BSP v3.7.0 on the M3 Starter Kit.

See the Documentation section above on how to build it.

GDP

Rebasing of GDP on the Genivi-14 Yocto Baseline is well underway. The various pull requests mentioned in the earlier blogs have been merged into a GDP working branch called rocko. My pull request to update the branch to use Yocto BSP v3.7.0 has been merged. I have successfully sanity tested building the branch on the M3 Starter Kit.

A new addition from Renesas is coming into GENIVI's Development Platform (GDP): genivi-dev-platform/pull/62 repository 

It's always exciting to see new hardware be supported by the GDP and this addition is no exception. The platform this time is the Renesas Gen 3 which is a high-end System on a Chip (SoC) designed with autonomous driving in mind. I'm sure we'll see more information on this once the code for this is merged into the GDP but for now if you're eager you can follow along at GitHub as it gets merged.

The most recent FOSDEM conference is over and I hope to review some presentations done there for those who couldn't make it. Lots of GENIVI members were there, both presenting and participating in various meetings. I hope to bring everyone up to date with a series of blog posts so without further ado I'm going to start by blogging my recent article for the GENIVI Newsletter below.

GENIVI Bridging the Automotive Industry and Open Source at FOSDEM

GENIVI members were widely represented at FOSDEM this year and while there were fewer pure automotive talks this year, there was still a great deal of discussion on automotive open source from GENIVI members and the open source community.

Of note were a number of talks that clearly show in what direction our community is headed. That direction is broadly called “upwards” on the stack toward a more connected car and “downwards” toward the Linux kernel. GENIVI, of course, is focused on commodity middleware in the head unit, but there is a lot of open source work in automotive being done in the Linux kernel and on the network side in the cloud that connects to the GENIVI middleware.

GENIVI’s GDP team lead, Zeeshan Ali, presented Creating the open connected car with GENIVI (https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/openconnectedcar/) in the embedded devroom. Many sessions in this devroom attracted a full house at FOSDEM and the GENIVI GDP talk was no exception. Zeeshan went through a little history of GENIVI then spoke about various GENIVI components coming into the GDP and went a bit deeper into several of them. GENIVI’s spins were mentioned as were the Google Summer of Code proposals, the Smart City pilot project as well as a call for volunteers made to the wider open source community. Right after the GDP talk, Konsulko’s Leon Anavi held a talk on creating hardware for the Raspberry Pi board-- it was also very popular and well done. A number of other highly relevant talks were covered in the embedded devroom:

• Open Source Car Control (https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/open_source_car_control/)  byJosh Hartung, PolySync
• Success and Failure in Building an Open-Source Software Platform for Autonomous Driving Systems (https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/succes_failure_autonomous_driving/)  by Lukas Bulwahn, BMW Car IT
• Kernel DLC Metrics, Statistic Analysis and Bug-Patterns (https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/kernel_dlc_metrics/) by Nicholas McGuire, Open Source Automation Development Lab

The first of these talks was astonishing. The people at PolySync reverse engineered CAN signals to enable control by wire functionality on a name brand car. They created an automated system to control the throttle, brakes and steering. All of this was done with as much “off the shelf” hardware and software as possible and when they couldn’t find hardware to fit their needs they created it. GENIVI member PolySync is a startup that wants to build up an ecosystem around these technologies and by the looks of it they’ve had some success so far. One of the big takeaways from the talk was not how a company like this might disrupt the relationship between automotive OEMs and their suppliers, but how easy it is to reverse engineer automotive protocols and how quickly and cheaply the work can be done. The automotive design and development process is laborious, but it is that way for a reason. Those reasons, i.e., quality, safety, robustness, are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, but
it’s clear that there are ambitious attempts out there to do “permissionless innovation” around the CAN network as well as other control systems in modern vehicles, and not just using software.

Lukas Bulwahn’s talk was very enlightening. It provided a look at future plans around Adaptive AUTOSAR and CommonAPI and what direction they plan to take. It also spoke about a distinction between “control” and “cognitive” software and how traditional automotive software development is changing into a new paradigm that incorporates more powerful SoCs, artificial intelligence, and a more dynamic software structure. Many will find the paper (http://www.bmw-carit.com/downloads/publications/ResearchOnAnOpenSourceSoftwarePlatformForAutonomousDrivingSystems.pdf) that was the basis of this talk interesting reading.

Lastly, the talk by Nicholas McGuire and an additional talk by another Open Source Automation Development Lab member on statistical quality measurements in Linux provided a good overview of the discoveries from the process of preparing Linux for functional safety certification. This is a hot topic among OEMs and other GENIVI members as they look to take advantage of the significantly greater power that modern silicon offers them in the vehicle overall.

From Zeeshan’s talk which spoke about the open connected car to the talks from BMW and Open Source Automation Development Lab, we can see that interest in open source and in GENIVI components is growing to embrace the cloud and the cluster. It feels like GENIVI members are pushing open source automotive software in both directions.