Text丨Peng Suping
Edit丨Su Jianxun
From a simple means of transportation to a mobile terminal with interactive capabilities, which underlying technologies are becoming more and more important in the trend of intelligent car evolution? The hardware level is the chip, and the software level is the operating system.
“The operating system is like glue, bonding key technologies such as chips, middleware, algorithm applications, and cloud data, and jointly driving the operation of computers on smart cars.” Dong Yuanwen, general manager of BlackBerry QNX Greater China, made a vivid comment on this simile.
QNX is the top player in automotive operating systems. This is a Canadian company founded in 1980, which was acquired by BlackBerry in 2010 and is now a key player in BlackBerry’s IoT division.
What is QNX’s market position? According to statistics, last year’s global automobile production was about 80 million vehicles, and 20 million vehicles were equipped with QNX software technology. According to industry data, a quarter of the new cars produced last year were equipped with intelligent networking functions. That is to say, almost all smart cars are equipped with QNX software technology or systems.
But unlike computers and mobile phones, there are many domains and control units in a smart car. A smart car is like a network system composed of a bunch of computers, often equipped with many different operating systems to achieve different functions. Just like the chips on the hardware side, there are now cockpit chips and smart driving chips that drive different scenarios.
QNX is characterized by a microkernel architecture with fast running speed and high stability. Therefore, it was the first to cut into the automotive operating system with high requirements for safety and stability (it entered the automotive field in 1999). In 2016, Time Magazine Once commented that “QNX is to cars, just like Microsoft is to computers”. However, with the development of car intelligence, more car companies and technology companies have entered this field. Open source Linux has gradually occupied a certain share, and Android, which is “ly earning money” in the mobile Internet era, has also begun to enter the car.
For example, in the vehicle-mounted system represented by the smart cockpit, on the one hand, the instrument and HUD are highly related to the power system and the assisted driving system, which are just needed for real-time performance and reliability, and continue to run on embedded real-time systems such as QNX; on the other hand On the one hand, central control, rear entertainment, etc. have high requirements for richness of applications, and the industry is more inclined to adopt open source and open systems. According to the industry report released by Deloitte Consulting, new domestic car manufacturers often Secondary development based on the Android system, such as Xpeng Xmart OS and Weilai NIO OS, technology and Internet companies conduct in-depth customization on Linux, such as Huawei Hongmeng OS and AliOS.
Regarding this trend, Dong Yuanwen was noncommittal. He said: “Each computer in the car has different operating system requirements. Google’s Android, open source Linux and BlackBerry QNX are not competitors, but partners.”
He said frankly that the infotainment system has high ecological requirements. Now there are many smart cockpits with “one core and multiple screens”. For example, the latest mass-produced models of Weilai ET7 and ET5 are all QNX and Android cooperation. The specific plan is, Relying on the Qualcomm 8155 chip, QNX’s hypervisor runs on the chip, and the upper layer is QNX responsible for the instrumentation of the functional safety domain, basic assisted driving functions in the cabin, etc., and Android is responsible for the central control and the co-pilot screen .
Hypervisor is a virtual machine technology. In a virtualized environment, multiple systems can run on the same hardware platform. While realizing the sharing of hardware resources, the software remains independent and does not interfere with each other. Therefore, it is indispensable under the trend of integration. An underlying technology. The QNX Hypervisor is currently the mainstream virtual machine product that meets the car-level requirements. In this regard, Qualcomm and QNX are highly bound together. The “QQ” (Qualcomm+QNX) combination accounts for more than 90% of the smart cockpit field.
In addition to the smart cockpit, QNX’s business also involves the fields of automatic assisted driving and high-performance computing. The intelligent driving system is also an important frontier for the layout of current technology companies and car companies, so open source Linux is favored by many players, such as Tesla and Waymo. Currently, both Linux and QNX occupy a considerable share in this field.
Dong Yuanwen said that in the field of automatic assisted driving and high-performance computing, the BlackBerry QNX ecosystem is relatively rich. There are many automatic assisted driving such as Adaptive Platform AUTOSAR, and middleware commonly used in high-performance computing. Various ecological partners have already adapted Assigned to QNX. According to reports, XPILOT 3.0 and 3.5 on Xpeng Motors P5 and P7 are equipped with BlackBerry QNX ASIL D certified systems. In addition, Volvo, Daimler, Jaguar Land Rover and other car companies are also equipped with related systems.
List of QNX solutions
It is worth mentioning that the centralization of the software and hardware architecture of smart cars is a relatively recognized trend in the industry. In the past two years, intra-domain integration has become commonplace. Next, inter-domain integration will also be implemented. In the next one or two years, “cabin-driving integration” will As a mainstream solution, QNX will still be an important player in the underlying software.
In September this year, Nvidia released Drive Thor, a next-generation computing platform, with a computing power of up to 2000TOPS, eight times that of the current Orin, and Qualcomm soon released a smart car called “Integrated Automotive Supercomputing SoC” Chip – Snapdragon Ride Flex, with a comprehensive computing power of up to 2000TOPS. Behind the leap in computing power, the next-generation products of both parties are aimed directly at each other’s hinterland, intending to win the two scenarios of autonomous driving and smart cockpit at the same time.
BlackBerry QNX is a traditional partner of Qualcomm and Nvidia, and is an important part of its overall basic software platform solution . Dong Yuanwen said that BlackBerry QNX will continue to provide support from the perspective of basic software in the latest cabin-driving integrated solution. The basic software in the Nvidia Drive Thor platform is Drive OS, and Drive OS is equipped with BlackBerry QNX ASIL D-certified The same is true for the functional safety system of Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride Flex.
Under the trend of intelligence, domestic enterprises are also strengthening their layout in related fields. In addition to international giants such as Qualcomm, QNX is also expanding more customers in China, such as Xinchi Technology, Rockchip, etc. Some projects of these companies have also been designated.
media reports
36Kr Sohu technology interface
related events
- Dong Yuanwen, general manager of BlackBerry QNX Greater China: cooperation with Android and Linux is not competition, and the integration of cabin and driving brings new opportunities2022-12-21
- BlackBerry’s stock price has soared 172% this year, can the car operating system stand out from the encirclement2021-01-26
- Taking the lead in applying the QNX safety operating system, SmartPlus joins hands with BlackBerry to promote the implementation of self-driving heavy trucks2020-11-18
- Amazon joins forces with BlackBerry to achieve a win-win situation: AWS enters the automotive market, BlackBerry consolidates its market position2020-01-15
- BlackBerry Announces Deeper Cooperation with Jaguar Land Rover in the Field of Smart Cars2019-09-09
This article is transferred from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8lRYc0psl7I
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.