First four GENIVI compliant solutions approved

The GENIVI alliance for In-Vehicle Infotainment has announced a new compliance programme for member companies and the first four companies to offer approved compliant solutions: Canonical's Ubuntu IVI Remix, Mentor Graphics' Embedded IVI Base Platform, MontaVista's Automotive Technology Platform and Wind River's Platform for Infotainment.

All of the approved solutions run on Intel Atom and ARM architectures, except for MontaVista's which only runs on ARM. According to the alliance, manufacturers are already making GENIVI compliance a requirement in their requests for proposals from IVI developers; the compliance program will allow those developers to respond to those requests.

The program allows IVI developers to use different versions of components – which GENIVI says encourages diversity – including replacing open source components with proprietary ones. The specific requirements for compliance are not apparently published but are available to members and are the result of 14 months of work by GENIVI expert groups.

In Ubuntu's case, the Ubuntu IVI Remix is based on its Ubuntu Core; Core is a subset of the Ubuntu operating system designed to provide a base for vertical applications. IVI Remix also includes support for Ubuntu One, the personal cloud service from Canonical, which will allow music to be streamed to a vehicle anywhere in the world. A pre-release version of Ubuntu IVI Remix, based on Ubuntu 11.04 is currently available for testing and a production version, based on 11.10, will be released in October.

GENIVI was founded in 2009 by Intel, BMW, Delphi, GM, Magneti-Marelli, PSA Peugot Citroen, Visteon and Wind River Systems and now has many members in the IT and automotive industry. The group had previously chosen MeeGo as the basis for a reference platform. MeeGo for IVI version 1.0 was released in August 2010 and MeeGo for IVI version 1.2 was released in May this year.

(djwm)