“In the IoT market, where the use of software-defined systems is increasing across a variety of industries, represented by SDV, and more powerful embedded system software is required, BlackBerry’s QNX 8.0 OS, which enables embedded software to run in any environment, will be the best choice for OEMs and developers.”

Grant Courville, Vice President of BlackBerry, presented QNX-based software as a reliable, proven, future-proof solution for embedded development in the software-defined era at a press conference on the 7th.

VP Grant Cooreville said that in embedded industries including automotive, industrial, medical, aerospace and robotics, software is increasingly embedded within devices, devices are becoming more intelligent, complexity is increasing at the system level and the complexity of software management is increasing as OEMs hire a huge number of software developers to develop everything in-house from operating systems to applications.

In particular, OEMs face many obstacles in developing basic software such as OS and middleware, and in security, reliability, and safety certification. He noted that it is extremely difficult for the company to build on its own, but it is not a direct source of revenue.

Accordingly, BlackBerry announced the release of QNX Software Development Platform 8.0 for embedded software development, including development convenience, security, reliability, and safety certification.

QNX 8.0 is a recently released product based on a microkernel OS, a hypervisor and QNS safety certification, and is the platform upon which products such as QNX Hypervisor 4 Safety are based.

According to VP Grant Cooreville, it is an embedded OS that has better performance than any OS released in the past and can be used on low-cost processors such as single or dual processors as well as high-performance processors with 64 cores.

In particular, the tools have been updated a lot and safety and security features are provided.

It also supports development through the DevOps module, Software Center, and provides the highest performance graphics through collaboration with chip vendors, and provides customers with patches and OS updates.

It also provides development tools that are industry-standard and include Microsoft's Visual Studio Code ID, which was not available in previous OSes.

We are also actively working to improve developers' convenience and shorten development periods through the cloud.

“The industry trend today is to use the cloud to accelerate collaboration, accelerate development cycles, leverage CI/CD pipelines, and support early testing in the development phase,” said Grant Cooreville, vice president. “BlackBerry is also helping to accelerate software development using the cloud.”

In particular, Blackberry provides binary parity, so both the OS and hypervisor provided by Blackberry It can be used equally in cloud and embedded hardware environments, which has the advantage of allowing customers to integrate the software into their existing environments.

Vice President Grant Curville also introduced the integrated digital cockpit.

“The challenge that our customers face is that there are so many SoC chips out there, and they want to pick the chip that best fits their digital cockpit needs,” said Grant Cooreville, vice president. “The challenge that OEMs and Tier 1s face is that there is so much software out there, whether it’s Android or Linux, that they have a hard time deciding which one to pick.”

In particular, the problem is that the size of the development team has grown significantly. In the past, whether it was the instrument panel or the infotainment system, each team developed it, and the software was also different, but now there is a problem that all of this is integrated into a single ECU.

To this end, BlackBerry has announced that it has created something called the Digital Cockpit Reference Stack.

It includes BlackBerry's hypervisor and all the software provided by BlackBerry, and ensures that it runs without any problems not only on target hardware but also in the cloud.

Next, QNX Sound, which manages the vehicle's sound and audio, was introduced.

This is a solution that enables integrated management across the entire vehicle, rather than managing sound at the individual ECU level.

In addition to software, BlackBerry also provides customers with tools to design and manage their devices as they wish. This can reduce costs and shorten development time.

BlackBerry is also working to increase software accessibility, with the launch of QNX Everywhere.

This is an easy-to-use, license-free development tool for students and researchers developing as a hobby without the goal of commercialization.

QNX Everywhere can also be used for educational purposes, which will help industries struggling with a developer shortage.

“BlackBerry has the expertise and over 40 years of experience in delivering trusted operating systems across a wide range of industries, including automotive, industrial control, aerospace and defense, medical, and robotics,” said Grant Cooreville, vice president. “BlackBerry is delivering a future-ready software portfolio to drive industry-leading innovation and customer value.”