Open to Improving Connected Vehicle Safety, Linux Foundation's ELISA Project Enables Linux in Safety Applications

By Matthew Vulpis, Content Contributor  |  March 30, 2022

In today’s highly digital world, businesses are beginning to work together to truly drive technological innovation, to benefit not only themselves but the consumers too. With the digitalization of many industries underway, global cooperation is easier than ever, as 2,000 strategic alliances are currently formed every year, with that number growing by 15 percent each year as well.

However, among forms of business cooperation and collaboration, the most notable today is open source software and technology. Open source software (OSS) is software that is distributed with its source code, making it available for use, modification, and distribution with its original rights. This means programmers who have access to source code can change a program by adding to it, changing it, or fixing parts of it that aren’t working properly.

Open source offers many benefits to enterprises, providing increased transparency into the code base, as well as all discussions about how the community develops features and addresses bugs. It also offers enhanced reliability, as the more expert eyes that have a chance to look at the code, the better the probability a fault is found, and the code is kept stable.

According to a RedHat report, 83 percent of businesses today said that enterprise open source is instrumental to their organizations’ abilities to take advantage of cloud architectures over the past two years, and found that 29 percent of IT leaders say open-source software has better security, while 27 percent like that it gives access to the latest innovations.

And across all industries, open source is being leveraged heavily in the automotive industry. The popularity of OSS in the automotive space has soared in recent years as OSS can significantly reduce development time and minimize otherwise costly investments. Though it has taken some time, OSS is quickly becoming common in the automotive industry as more organizations look to advance their automotive innovations.

Recently, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project, an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems, announced a stronger ecosystem focused on automotive use cases with the addition of the Automotive Intelligence and Control of China (AICC), LOTUS Cars and ZTE (News - Alert).

Linux is used in all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes. Launched in February 2019 by the Linux Foundation, ELISA works with Linux kernel and safety communities to agree on what should be considered when Linux is to be used in safety-critical systems. The project has several dedicated working groups that focus on providing system integrators with resources to apply and analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems.

“The ELISA ecosystem continues to grow globally with strong support from automakers across Asia and Europe,” Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation (News - Alert). “By leveraging the expertise of current and new ELISA Project members, we are defining the best practices for use of Linux in the automobiles of the future. “

The Automotive Working Group discusses the conditions and prerequisites the automotive sector needs to integrate Linux into a safety critical system. The group, which includes collaboration from ADIT, Arm, Codethink, Evidence (a part of Huawei (News - Alert)), Red Hat, and Toyota, focuses on actual use cases from the Automotive domain to derive the technical requirements to the kernel as a basis for investigation within the Architecture Workgroup and to serve as a blueprint for actual projects in the future.

There is also close collaboration with Automotive Grade Linux, which results in a meta-ELISA layer enhancing the instrument cluster demo for safety relevant parts. As leaders in the automotive industry, AICC, LOTUS Cars, and ZTE will most likely join the Automotive Working Group.

As the industry’s leading ICV computing infrastructure company, AICC is committed to providing OEMs with intelligent vehicle computing platforms and digital bases for empowering them with the differentiated application development ability. In November 2021, AICC released iVBB2.0 series products, which takes ICVOS as the core product, then develops ICVHW, ICVSEC, ICVEC, and other product units.

Currently, iVBB2.0 has been delivered to many OEMs and achieved collaboration on cross-platform development, co-built SDV, multi-chip distributed deployment, data security policy deployment, and car cloud collaborative computing.

“Becoming a member of the ELISA Project is in line with the high real-time, high-security, and high-reliability commitment that AICC has always made,” said Dr. Jin Shang, CEO & CTO of AICC. “This will provide a guarantee for the mass production development of AICC’s ICV computing infrastructure platform from security and quality perspectives. Based on the elements, tools, and processes shared by ELISA, AICC will build safety-critical applications and systems relating to Linux requirements, leading to widely used and internationally influential products.”

ZTE Corporation is a global leader in telecommunications and information technology. Founded in 1985, the company has been committed to providing innovative technologies and integrated solutions for operators, governments, and consumers from over 160 countries. ZTE has established 11 state-of-the-art global R&D centers and five intelligent manufacturing bases.

Relying on key technologies and core capabilities in the communications field, ZTE Automotive Electronics is committed to becoming a digital vehicle infrastructure capability provider and an independent high-performance partner in China, facilitating the intelligent and networked development in the automobile field. ZTE has been dedicated to GoldenOS R&D for more than 20 years.

On this basis, ZTE proposes the integrated automotive operating system solution of high-performance embedded Linux and high security microkernel OS/Hypervisor, covering all scenarios of intelligent vehicle control, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and intelligent network connectivity.

As for LOTUS Cars, which was honored as “Manufacturer of the Year” at the News UK Motor Awards in 2021, they’re focused on the safety of intelligent driving. It is a world-famous manufacturer of sports cars and racing cars noted for their lightweight and fine handling characteristics.

These new members join ADIT, AISIN AW CO., Arm, Automotive Grade Linux, Banma, BMW Car IT GmbH, Codethink, Elektrobit, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, Intel (News - Alert), Toyota, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, NVIDIA, SUSE, Suzuki, Wind River, OTH Regensburg, and Toyota.

“Functional safety is critical to intelligent driving,” said Jie Deng, LOTUS Cars In-Vehicle Operating System Lead. “LOTUS focuses on ‘track-level intelligent drive‘ and is committed to ensuring that drivers stay away from risks through active redundancy of software and hardware. We are very excited to join the ELISA Project and work with industry experts to productize Linux-based safety-critical systems for more drivers to experience intelligent driving in a highly safe and fun way.”




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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