Linux can finally run your car’s safety systems and driver-assistance features

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There’s a new Linux distro on the scene today, and it’s a bit specialized. Its development was led by the automotive electronics supplier Elektrobit, and it’s the first open source OS that complies with the automotive industry’s functional safety requirements.

One of the more interesting paradigm shifts underway in the automotive industry is the move to software-defined vehicles. Cars have increasingly been controlled by electronic systems during the past few decades, but it’s been piecemeal. Each added new function, like traction control, antilock braking, or a screen instead of physical gauges, required its own little black box added to the wiring loom.

There can now be more than 200 discrete controllers in a modern vehicle, all talking to each other through a CAN bus network. The idea behind the software-defined vehicle is to take a clean-sheet approach. Instead, you’ll find a small number of domain controllers—what the automotive industry is choosing to call “high performance compute” platforms—each responsible for a different set of activities.