Bosch rounds up technologists to create standard mini-computers to boost driverless cars
The AMALTHEA4public project, announced this morning, will help cars run the complex software necessary for driverless cars.
It is creating a standardised platform for developers to work on and allow companies to connect to it with their development tools.
New cars currently have around 70 minicomputers, or embedded systems, that monitor and regulate driving functions.
As cars become increasingly autonomous - ranging from self parking which is available now to fully autonomous driving - they will need more and more software.
Using several central processing units (CPUs) working in parallel will give minicomputers more power as they are faster than the single-core systems typically installed.
Parallell CPU systems come in two forms: multi-core processors and many-core processors. The latter has more than eight cores - a promising new technology for processing large amounst of data in comparison to the multi-core hardware found in a typical desktop computers.
The AMALTHEA4public group is also establishing a methodology as well as the standard software platform to ensure that embedded systems are designed in the most effective manner. This means dividing software up and assigning it to different cores, rather than incorporating many-core and multi-core processors together.
Bosch hopes engineers will be able to efficiently develop multi- and many-core systems for their applications using this platform, which is based on open-source Eclipse.
The group is planning on creating an Eclipse project and community that will support the developers and keep them in touch with each other even after the project has finished.
"This should make the outcome of AMALTHEA4public available to a wider circle and establish it as the standard for developing embedded multi- and many-core systems", it claimed.
A vice president at Taiwanese chip manufacturer MediaTek recently called the automotive industry to action over IoT standards, imploring them to sign up to the Open Interconnect Consortium.
Standards across communication technology and interoperability between devices are a major sticking point within the tech industry.
Many vendors and manufacturers could be accused of sitting on the fence, using multiple standards groups to further their own technologies and be part of innovation, rather than sticking to one platform.