Ford rolls into the Xen Project as hypervisor gears up for autos

The Xen Project today delivered a major release of its hypervisor and associated tools, including contributions from automaker Ford, which quietly joined the project in June. Ford's interest in Xen reflects the automotive industry's acknowledgment that future vehicles will all include computers to handle many tasks, among them …

[Doctor Syntax]

"it is untenable for safety software to stop working if an infotainment system glitches, and so are exploring in-vehicle hypervisors to isolate different workloads"

The most effective way of preventing the infotainment system from stopping "safety" software working would be to isolate it with its own processor and nothing more in common with the rest of the vehicle than its power supply. The alternative proposed here is to build a SPoF.

Given the quality of the alleged "safety" S/W the best use of resources would be to concentrate on building some sanity into it.

[williamyf]

Given the current state of the auto industry of ECUs galore, talking among themsleves over an unreliable CANBus or Automotive Eth, and each ECU being a SPoF for its own susbsytem...

...I reckon that having 2 or 3 beefy computers handling everything, and using Virtualization for separation and live migration for redundancy in case of a Big computer hardware failure seems like a better way of doing things to me.

If one single beefy computer fails, the car keeps on going (unlike today if, for example, the engine control module fails), if any susbsytem fails, the other keep on going (like today, with the example of the engine control module being isolated from the Infotaintment).

[Steve Foster]

"...from the infotaintment..."

I guess if things have reached that stage (infotaintment), you're already kissing your arse goodbye!

[Like a badger]

I reckon that having 2 or 3 beefy computers handling everything, and using Virtualization for separation and live migration for redundancy in case of a Big computer hardware failure seems like a better way of doing things to me.

That's almost an aerospace approach. I'm sure you're right that its better in one sense, equally it's going to be much more expensive, and if the car has multiple CPUs, then chances are it will be deemed un-roadworthy if one of them isn't working (in the same way it won't be roadworthy if one of a dual braking circuit setup is not working). So a far more costly approach doesn't save me from the costs of failure, it simply mitigates a single cause of roadside failure. And if there's three CPUs, then I've got three times the chance of a failure.

Maybe not an idea for mass market cars.

[djack]

I think the aspect of failure that most people should be more concerned about isn't the cost of repair or maintenance of redundant systems, but the cost of actual failure when in use. If the brakes fail in a car at 70mph, I wouldn't be congratulating myself on saving a few quid on not having a redundant system.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Coming soon to your car

Mobile Firewall for only $£€20 a month.

Because $badguy has figured an easy remote way into one of these computers, you need to be protected.

I passed a vintage Mini in London recently. It was tiny compared to today's 'mini' size cars. It was functional. It was cheap. It was fun. Cars today are safer, I grant that. But as fun?

Which channel you choose using the virtual switch is now telemetry and metadata to be stored for 30 years.

[Nudge Away More]

Not forgeting ones voice data

Numerous manufacturers have hidden away in the Term & Conditions that they reserve the right to retain voice recording from inside the car which of course will never be hacked, leaked or used against you aka Big Brother.

How did we sleepwalk into allowing this to happen ?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Coming soon to your car

The rot set in when they gave the Mini wind-up windows.

[IGotOut]

Re: Coming soon to your car

With Leyland / BL /Rover the rot was setting in before the paint job

[David 132]

Re: Coming soon to your car

Especially in the seams under the headlights, and along the bottom of the door skins :(

[David Hicklin]

Re: Coming soon to your car

> along the bottom of the door skins

It always seems to strike there irrespective of the car make!

Yes I do remember the rust buckets of the 1980's <shudders>

[FirstTangoInParis]

Hmm

It would be nice if auto makers got the bugs out of infotainment systems first. The last two cars have had serious bugs which never got fixed. My latest uses Google Automotive which extends even into the door locks. For some reason the audio sometimes doesn’t wake up for a couple of minutes, which is how I noticed the indicator relay noise is electronically generated. And the courtesy lights don’t work properly. Give me door switches and radios with knobs on any day.

[CapeCarl]

OOM Killer

(on the dashboard screen): "Out Of Memory: You are about to get into a major accident. In 30 milliseconds I will need to give more priority to the anti-lock brakes, air bags, automatic collision avoidance steering and 9-1-1 autodial. Please choose which low priority VM to kill: 1) Back seat movie #1, 2) Back seat movie #2, 3) Satellite radio, 4) GPS navigation"

[ComicalEngineer]

Cars already have too many computer controlled functions

My current Volvo is 7 years old. After annual software updates:

* Occasionally the whole touchscreen goes black after starting the engine and takes 5-6 minutes to reboot.

* During this period it's impossible to change the temperature, fan speed etc, all of which is controlled from the touch screen.

* A few weeks ago it was impossible to change the radio volume and the indicator click went silent until I turned it off and on again.

* The road sign speed limit indicator will occasionally not work until the car is restarted.

* The collision avoidance occasionally slams the brakes on if it sees a car parked on a bend.

It does have several positives such as the tyre pressure monitoring which tells you which tyre is low. Plus it's comfortable and my version (2 litre front WD diesel) is very economical.

A few weeks ago I had a new version on loan from the main dealer. It had all the same annoyances that my 7 year old one has plus added annoyances.

* You can turn the lane keeping function off by delving in the menus, but it turns itself on again whenever you restart the car.

* If you go 2mph over the speed limit it beeps at you repeatedly. You can't turn this off.

* Quite often it will pick up a lower speed limit sign on a side street and put the brakes on. You can't turn this off.

* Everything you turn off will reset itself every time you restart the car.

* There is no longer a Diesel version and the petrol version does 35mpg compared to the 58mpg of mine.

Any wonder that I love my Mk.2 Golf GTI so much?

[David 132]

Re: Cars already have too many computer controlled functions

Occasionally the whole touchscreen goes black

Consider yourself lucky.

My wife's Disco uses embedded Microsoft Windows.

When the infotainment computer failed a couple of years ago, not only did she lose: radio, CD, bluetooth, satnav, cameras, and parking sensors... but, because it's Windows, it would attempt to boot up, blue-screen, reboot, blue-screen, reboot... ad infinitum.

Sounds like a bad joke, but it's true.

Have you any idea how annoying it is to try and drive with a large, bright-blue screen flashing in your peripheral vision every 10 seconds or so?

[penfoold]

Re: Cars already have too many computer controlled functions

"... and the indicator click went silent until I turned it off and on again"

Ba-da-boom!

[Taliesinawen]

In-vehicle hypervisors to isolate different workloads.

No just no, running your car on a virtualised operating system doesn't sound too stable to me. For instance if updating the infotainment system caused the steering wheel to change orientation. Isolated independent dedicate hardware doing the one task is the most reliable solution.

[rgjnk]

Reinventing the wheel

You'd almost think there weren't already solutions available off the shelf for partitioning & isolation, with aircraft certification, that could run on commodity embedded processors. They even have all the useful things like proper real-time support and IO drivers and audio and graphics and anything else you'd ever need.

But no, let's not look outside their comfort zone and instead let's try to reinvent something else into something it was never designed to be.

They're starting from the wrong place and doing it the wrong way because they don't know better and haven't learnt the hard lessons yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reinventing the wheel

Indeed. Pretty much any embedded operating system, including those for safety-critical applications, now has a virtualization layer and has had one for some time. And Linux has KVM as part of its kernel. All well tested and supported.

And on the other side is an industry (automotive) with a long track record in shoddy bespoke software implementations which end up insecure, unsafe and, in many cases, quickly abandoned shortly after because it lacks the understanding and expertise to fix it.

[phuzz]

I hope they also thanked Broadcom for their contribution.

Without their attacks on their own VMWare customers, less companies would even be considering Xen.