Fujitsu announces a new ARM SoC

On my birthday Fujitsu announced a new ARM9 based SoC. The new part is a lower cost version of their Jade D processor. The MR86R03 also known as the “Jade L” is aimed at applications requiring high CPU performance combined with sophisticated 2D/3D graphics for applications including ATMs, HMI panels and automotive. It combines a 320MHz ARM926-EJS core with the Coral PA graphics accelerator.

We don’t make enough noise about our long-standing relationship with Fujitsu. We have many design wins in automotive with Fujitsu both on the Jade D and Coral graphics accelerator. We have been talking about taking this success into other markets and with the introduction of the new Jade L I think there’s a real opportunity to make this a reality.

Beamed in, brought in, built in…

As QNX CAR passes its first anniversary I am struck by how quickly the nature of the technology integrations are changing. When we started down this path we had a vision of a connected car but I didn’t really considered how far the concept could go.

We are now seeing three types of integrations. The most traditional type of integration is one where the application resides on the head unit and may or may not require connectivity to the cloud. This is known as built-in.

Bringing a device into the car that interacts with the head unit is categorized as brought-in. The most obvious of these brought-in devices  are portable media players – think Apple iPod – that connect into the vehicles infotainment system. With the dramatic increase in smart phone shipments (I read somewhere they represent somewhere around 30% of phones currently shipping) we are seeing a new class of brought-in solutions where the lionshare of the application processing is done on the phone. A simple application that  allows control of the phone and  rendered of the data resides on the head unit. Cloud connectivity comes via the 3G network and the phone and head unit communicate via bluetooth.

The newest, and potentially most exciting class of integration is the beamed-in application. A beamed-in application runs entirely in the cloud and is simply rendered in the vehicle.

QNX is working with third parties to bring all these technologies into the QNX CAR reference platform and in the coming months QNX CAR participants will be able to explore the possibilities for themselves.

Beam Me Up Scotty

QNX CAR and the Freescale i.MX51

On March 15th the latest experimental i.MX51 BSP was posted on Foundry27. If you are interested you can grab it here http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.bsp/wiki/FreescaleImx51Pdk.

A BSP in itself may not be newsworthy (or worth blogging about) but the i.MX51 is a bit special in that it will be the newest platform for QNX CAR. The i.MX51 is a particularly nice fit for QNX CAR for a few reasons. First and foremost this is a part that is garnering a lot of customer interest in automotive. Customers have been pushing us to get this BSP out the door.

Another nice thing about the i.MX51 is the graphics acceleration. The i.MX35 is a great platform for QNX CAR because it includes OpenVG acceleration. Adobe Flash takes advantage of this acceleration and the QNX Aviage HMI Suite used in QNX CAR is Adobe Flash based. The i.MX51 builds on this by adding OpenGL ES acceleration so customers will be able to accelerate 3D graphics as well (think navigation). Add hardware video decode and you have a very nice part for next generation infotainment systems.

Watch for it in the M6 QNX CAR build – coming soon.

The Kings of Leon and How to partner with QNX: Meet post 49429.

Apparently I lead a sheltered life. And so I’ve been compelled to rename this blog.

Today I was roundly chastised for not knowing who the Kings of Leon are. I must admit, that my radio dial is mostly tuned into CBC radio (think NPR in America), and my playlists are generally pilfered by my much more a la mode french wife who gravitates towards euro music. Alas, I have not yet heard a Kings of Leon song. I also don’t own a television, and therefore was not present to watch them win their Grammy award. Congratulations on that win by the way.

This does, however, illustrate well that you need to participate in the culture in order to benefit from the culture. Thus I’ll forward you on to my original post:

Trade show season is well underway and I’m regularly being asked “How can we partner with QNX?”.

With this in mind, I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to post 49429. a.k.a Leon. Leon is one of the more than 30,000 Foundry27 Community Members who are posting their needs and requirements on our QNX community portal for developers. In Leon’s case he’s looking for:

"a cheap x86 target system that has at least a x4 PCI Express slot, and with network support"

Now at first blush this may not seem significant, and I won’t speak for Leon’s case, but I can tell you that many a similar request have turned into programs for several thousand sockets (silicon vendor lingo for units sold). So whether it’s silicon, boards and systems or other embedded software components and services, the easiest way to find QNX customers and engage with us in partnering activities is to check out what the QNX developer community is asking for on www.foundry27.com. And now with over 1000 posts per month there are a lot of commercial opportunities to partner with QNX and our customers.

And if you’re a supplier of a system that might meet Leon’s requirements, let me introduce you to the ‘Kings of Leon’: http://community.qnx.com/sf/go/post49429

QNX Partners at QNX Russia 2010…the place to be!

QNX Russia 2010, the place to be!

Russia continues to be a hotbed of embedded development around the QNX Neutrino RTOS. SWD Software, our Platinum distributor for the Russia, CIS countries and Poland does a spectacular job of hosting this biennial event. The event typically draws over 500 participants and this year includes a great line up of QNX hardware partners including Freescale, Texas Instruments, Kontron and Connect Tech. We encourage any of our partners interested in expanding their market opportunities to participate in this event. You can sponsor the event or even just join as a participant. For more information on how to participate please drop my a note with your interest at kzeviar@qnx.com.

Customers Are Partners Too: Check out the Audi A8 infotainment unit

Audi and QNX have been collaborating for some time on advanced multimedia and navigation systems.  Here you can see the front console of the 2010 Audi A8 in our booth at Embedded World Germany. This system uses the QNX Neutrino RTOS. The highly successful Audi program was supported by our Automotive Services Team. Thank you to the team at Audi and BFFT to for enabling this wonderful display for promoting QNX in Automotive Infotainment design.

Smart Products Require Smart Partnerships

Last week we released a PR about our partnership with Texas Instruments to enable adopters of the QNX CAR reference design and development program with the OMAP3530 and J3 (AM3517) platforms. Combined with the OMAP3730 the three parts are proving to be an effective go to market roadmap for development from prototype to production of infotainment and digital instruments cluster designs. Customers have been demonstrating good success, for more than a year,  with adopting the low cost OMAP3530 Beagle board for early stage development while planning for release on this or other parts in the portfolio.

Apropos, our PR was picked up by Hans Lewis of TMCnet as supporting content for their Smart Products Ecosystem Conference and web portal. http://smart-products.tmcnet.com/topics/smart-auto/articles/77730-ti-provide-pre-integrated-hardware-support-the-qnx.htm

Working with partners like TI who understand the need to closely collaborate at enabling customers is key to our future success and the success of the QNX CAR program. To learn more about how customers are using the QNX CAR reference platform and Texas Instruments OMAP and other ARM processors to rapidly develop their automotive infotainment platforms visit here http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/lte_overview.html.

Driver Distraction and Voice

We recently announced our partnership with Nuance around their speech technology. It is now available  as part of QNX CAR and a key element of the experience in the ng-Connect Toyota Prius that finds its way to what seems like every tradeshow on the planet these days.

One of the big areas of controversy around these incredibly feature rich infotainment systems is driver distraction. I can see myself getting killed playing with it while driving so I can pretty clearly understand the problem.

Not too  long ago, I read  that 2 seconds is the maximum time that a driver can be looking at the infotainment system before it becomes a problem. 2 seconds? Count it out – 1001, 1002. That’s a long time. At 100km/hour you could travel more than half the length of a football field. I don’t want to be on the roads surrounded by a bunch of drivers spending two seconds looking at their infotainment systems.

In the joint QNX Nuance press release we state “Voice enables highly intuitive user interfaces, ultimately driving adoption of connected car services and minimizing manual and visual distractions.” When we were drafting this release I was thinking “Good. QNX CAR is definitely moving in the right direction.”

Maybe I’ll be able to get home safely tonight after work.

Romain

QNX CAR at Cebit

While most of the the QNX Germany team was manning the stand at Embedded World in Nuremberg last week, we were also participating at Cebit with Alcatel Lucent. Once again, the QNX based LTE Connected Car was the star of the show. In fact, the car was part of the show organizer’s tour of the  top 10 things to see at Cebit. This had the effect of increasing visits to an already busy stand. The team was kept hopping to manage the increased visits from the media, telecoms service providers, and of course, car companies and their suppliers. In fact, almost 500 people experienced the car during their visit to the stand. Here’s a picture of the car at Cebit.

(by Linda Campbell)

QNX Support for CIFS

Customers looking for additional CIFS Support on QNX  can now find assistance from Visuality Systems. Based out of Israel with offices in the US, Visuality provides CIFS NQ for embedded products and a pint sized CIFS solution coming in at around 350k. This is compared to teh 2-4MB of SAMBA.

For those not in the know CIFS is short for Common Internet File System (CIFS). It  is a protocol that lets programs make requests for files and services on remote computers on the Internet. CIFS uses the client/server programming model. A client  program makes a request of a server program (usually in another computer) for access to a file or to pass a message to a program that runs in the server computer. The server takes the requested action and returns a response.

Importantly the Visuality Systems solution is not based on GPL, a concern of many OEM’s we see migrating from Linux to defend against IP infringement claims arising from the use of GPL.

Visuality will soon be posted on the QNX Partner Directory and they will also a post a link to their QNX Neutrino compatible product on the Foundry27 Bazaar.