On Q

Space-grade technology... in the palm of your hand

2013-05-16T12:57:00.000-04:00

What does your phone have in common with planes, trains, automobiles, and space stations? If it's a BlackBerry 10 smartphone, plenty.

When you pick up a BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10 phone, you are tapping into OS technology like no other. Technology that hospitals use to defeat cancer. Technology that power plants use to create energy. Technology that skyscrapers use to save energy. Technology that movie studios use to create mind-blowing special effects. And technology that calls for help if your car gets into an accident. In short, technology that makes a difference in my life, your life, everyone's life.

But enough from me. Especially when the video says it so much better...

Solar Impulse plane launches cross-America trek — with QNX on board

2013-05-03T14:12:00.000-04:00

It isn't always easy being green. But it can be really cool. Case in point: the Solar Impulse HB-SIA, a one-of-a-kind airplane powered only by the sun. Earlier this morning, the HB-SIA took off from an airfield in Mountain View, California, to start the first leg of its journey across America.

QNX is the official (and mighty proud) realtime OS partner for the Solar Impulse project. For more on the project and its goal of promoting green energy, see my previous posts and the Solar Impulse website.

Meanwhile, here is footage of this morning's take-off, courtesy of CNET:

The first website ever is back online

2013-04-30T10:32:00.002-04:00

I just stumbled on a cool blog post from Dan Noyes, the web manager for the CERN communications group. Dan tells us that the very first Web URL is now back online, and it looks just the way it did in 1992. Cool, that.

Without further ado, here is the URL: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

For the story behind this project, visit CERN's aptly named "Restoring the first website" project page. And while you're at it, check out this article on BBC News.

Successful beyond imagining

2013-04-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

Hey, do you remember the "Imagined" video that QNX released back in November? You know, the one that takes a sneak peak at what cars might be like a few years from now? Well, I have a couple of updates.

First, the video has logged more than 518,000 views. Impressive, that. Second, it's
been named an honoree in the annual Webby Awards. Which puts it in the same company as videos from Disney, HBO, and Coca-Cola. Doubly impressive, that!

If you aren't familiar with the Webby Awards, they've been dubbed by the New York Times as the “Internet’s highest honor.” You can find out more about them here. And while you're at it, check out the blog post from Mike Edgell, the creative director at Thornley Fallis, the company that helped us realize our vision of tomorrow's car.

The winners of the Webby Award winners will be announced tomorrow, April 30. Just one more day...

Canon unveils 8D, first DSLR with 4G connectivity

2013-04-01T07:38:00.000-04:00

April Fools' is over, folks — and yes, this post is a hoax. Some of the features, such as 4G connectivity, are indeed plausible, but can you detect the one truly anachronistic feature?

This just in: Canon Inc. has unveiled the new Canon 8D, a 42-megapixel APS-C digital SLR equipped with a 4G LTE antenna.

Outwardly, the new camera is almost identical to the existing 7D, which has been Canon's flagship APS-C DSLR since 2009. In fact, the only visible differences are a slightly larger LCD, a control button dedicated to the camera's 4G function, and an auto-telescoping built-in flash that uses a combination of high-intensity magnesium filaments and oxygen gas to achieve a guide number of 148 (in meters).

Most of the real changes have occurred inside. Aside from the new integrated LTE antenna, the megapixel count has jumped from 18 to 42, without any attendant increase in chroma or luminance noise, thanks a new generation backlit CMOS sensor. (Yes, you'll have to invest in expensive glass to take full advantage of the higher resolution.) And in a surprise move, Canon has decided to part with its well-regarded DIGIC processor technology — the new camera uses tandem processors, each based on a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 chip.

For details, vist the Canon website.

What has the QNX auto team been up to?

2013-03-30T16:46:00.000-04:00

Well, let's see...

Alex has been developing drivers for drivers
Andrew wants you to stop worrying and be appy
Thomas from Elektrobit scrambles an egg
Paul goes into isolation
Bernard and Justin think "Hello Bentley" is just the beginning
Paul can't get his mind off ice cream
Andy talks to Pandora about built-in, brought-in, and how HTML5 fits in
Yoram from Red Bend connects the dots between autos and airwaves
Nancy gets cranky over UIs
And Paul spends too much time on YouTube again

Why does all the cool stuff happen while I'm away?

2013-03-25T21:18:00.001-04:00

Now appearing in both

Fortune and Daily Planet

Do you ever get the feeling that the party starts the minute you leave the room? Well, it just happened to me. I was on vacation only a few days last week, but while I was away, Fortune magazine and Daily Planet both did pieces on QNX. What's up with that?

But seriously, this is cool. The Fortune article covers several bases: the history of QNX in mission-critical embedded systems, the leadership that QNX enjoys in automotive, and the new QNX concept car that made its debut at 2013 CES. Meanwhile, the Daily Planet video puts you in the front seat of the concept car for a tour of its many features — from voice control and video conferencing to the virtual mechanic. (Is it just me, or do the coolest features all start with the letter 'v'?)

Read the Fortune article here (you'll need a subscription to access it). And view the Daily Planet video here.

The isolation imperative: protecting software components in an ISO 26262 system

2013-03-11T20:52:00.000-04:00

Software components can be impolite, if not downright delinquent. For instance, a component might:

rob other components of CPU time
rob other components of file descriptors and other system resources
access the private memory of other components
corrupt data shared with other components
create a deadlock or livelock situation with other components

Shameful, I know. But in all seriousness, this sort of behavior can wreak havoc in a safety-critical system. For instance, let's say that a component starts to perform a CPU-intensive calculation just as the system enters a failure condition. Will that component hog the CPU and prevent an alarm process from running?

The answer, of course, is that it damn well better not.

It becomes important, then, to prevent components from interfering with one another. In fact, this principle is baked into the ISO 26262 functional safety standard for road vehicles, which defines interference as:

"...the presence of cascading failures from a sub-element with no ASIL [Automotive Safety Integrity Level] assigned, or a lower ASIL assigned, to a sub-element with a higher ASIL assigned leading to the violation of a safety requirement of the element”
To put it crudely, less important stuff can't stop more important stuff from happening.

So how do you prevent interference? One approach is through isolation. For instance, a system may implement spatial isolation between application processes. This would include mechanisms for interprocess communication and interprocess locking that prevent one process from inadvertently affecting another.

Mind you, there are multiple types of interference, so you need to implement multiple forms, or axes, of isolation. Time for a picture:

In general, you need to determine what does, and what doesn't, need to be isolated. You also need to identify which components are apt to be delinquent and build a cage around them to protect more critical components. Which brings me to a recent paper by my inestimable colleagues Chris Hobbs and Yi Zheng. It's titled "Protecting Software Components from Interference in an ISO 26262 System," and it explores techniques that can help you:

implement the component isolation required by ISO 26262
demonstrate that such isolation has been implemented

And while you're at it, check out the other titles in our "safe" whitepaper series. These include "The Dangers of Over-Engineering a Safe System" and "Ten Truths about Building Safe Embedded Software Systems."

And don't worry: there's nothing delinquent about downloading all of them.

This post originally appeared in the QNX auto blog.

Can a safety-critical system be over-engineered?

2013-03-07T13:40:00.002-05:00

Too much of a good thing?

It's a rhetorical question, of course. But hear me out.

As you can imagine, many safe systems must be designed to handle scenarios outside their intended scope. For instance, in many jurisdictions, passenger elevators must be capable of handling 11 times more weight than their recommended maximum — you just never know what people will haul into an elevator car. So, if the stated limit for a passenger elevator is 2000 pounds, the actual limit is closer to 22,000 pounds. (Do me a favor and avoid the temptation to test this for yourself.)

Nonetheless, over-engineering can sometimes be too much of a good thing. This is especially true when an over-engineered component imposes an unanticipated stress on the larger system. In fact, focusing on a specific safety issue without considering overall system dependability can sometimes yield little or no benefit — or even introduce new problems. The engineer must always keep the big picture in mind.

Case in point: the SS Eastland. In 1915 this passenger ship rolled over, killing more than 840 passengers and crew. The Eastland Memorial Society explains what happened:

"...the Eastland's top-heaviness was largely due to the amount and weight of the lifeboats required on her... after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, a general panic led to the irrational demand for more lifesaving lifeboat capacity for passengers of ships.

Lawmakers unfamiliar with naval engineering did not realize that lifeboats cannot always save all lives, if they can save any at all. In conformance to new safety provisions of the 1915 Seaman’s Act, the lifeboats had been added to a ship already known to list easily... lifeboats made the Eastland less not more safe..."
There you have it. A well-intentioned safety feature that achieved the very opposite of its intended purpose.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Recently, my colleague Chris Hobbs wrote a whitepaper on how a narrow design approach can subtly work its way into engineering decisions. Here's the scenario he uses for discussion:

"The system is a very simple, hypothetical in-cab controller (for an equally hypothetical) ATO system running a driverless Light Rapid Transit (LRT) system...

Our hypothetical controller has already proven itself in Rome and several other locations. Now a new customer is considering it for an LRT ATO in the La Paz-El Alto metropolitan area in Bolivia. La Paz-El Alto has almost 2.5 million inhabitants living at an elevation that rises above 4,100 meters (13,600 ft.—higher than Mount Erebus). This is a significant change in context, because the threat of soft and hard memory errors caused by cosmic rays increases with elevation. The customer asks for proof that our system can still meet its safety requirements when the risk of soft memory errors caused by radiation is included in our dependability estimates..."
So where should the engineer go from here? How can he or she ensure that the right concerns are being addressed? That is what Chris endeavours to answer. (Spoiler alert: The paper determines that, in this hypothetical case, software detection of soft memory errors isn't a particularly useful solution.)

Highly recommended.

All roads lead to QNX at embedded world 2013

2013-02-26T11:49:00.001-05:00

Montreal, my home town, was once known as a city of churches. So much so that Mark Twain famously quipped, "this is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window."

If Mr. Twain were alive today and able to visit embedded world 2013, he might make a similar comment about QNX. Because it seems that, wherever you turn at embedded world, someone is demonstrating a QNX-based system.

Multimedia and wireless demos
First stop is the QNX booth, where you'll find a natty new demo designed to showcase our support for wireless, video, and HMI technologies. Among other things, the demo shows how QNX lets you work with a mix of application and graphics environments, including Qt 5.0, OpenGL ES 2.0, and Crank Software’s Storyboard Suite.

Power up the demo, and you'll see several applications, including a medical monitor:

and a speedometer:

You'll also find games, a digital thermostat, a photo viewer, an audio meter, and several other demo apps. And did I mention? You can find two of these demo systems in the QNX booth, one based on a Freescale i.MX 6 SABRE Lite board and the other on a TI AM335 Starter Kit board.

PLC demos
If you're a hard-core industrial developer, be sure to catch the two programmable logic controller (PLC) platforms in the QNX booth. These platforms were a group effort: QNX provided the OS; companies like IsaGRAF, KW-Software, and koenig-pa provided the ladder logic and EtherCAT software; and Freescale and TI provided the hardware — one platform is based on a Freescale QorIQ TWR-P1025 Tower System Module, the other on a TI Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

The purpose of these platforms is simple: to reduce the time and cost of developing PLCs and other industrial systems. If you're interested, the eval software for the platform based on the Freescale module is now available for download from the QNX website.

QNX CAR platform demo
No, we didn't drive the new QNX concept car to embedded world. But we did bring a demo of the QNX CAR application platform, and from what I hear, it's driving lots of booth traffic (pun fully intended). Here's a snap of the demo, taken on the show floor:

Lotsa partner demos
Take a walk down the aisle, and you'll soon come across several other vendors showing QNX-based systems. Here are the ones we've identified so far:

Acontis is demonstrating its EC-Motion EtherCAT motion library running on the QNX Neutrino RTOS and a TI Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor. Hall 1/1-538.

Crank Software is demonstrating an automotive demo based on the QNX CAR application platform. Hall 4/4-330.

Digia is demonstrating “Qt 5 on the QNX platform – a Cinematic Experience,” which will show many new features in Qt 5 Qt Quick 2. Hall 4/4 – 520.

Freescale and koenig-pa are demonstrating a PLC reference platform that integrates koenig-pa EtherCAT protocol software, ISaGRAF PLC firmware, and the QNX Neutrino RTOS on a Freescale dual-core QorIQ P1025 processor. Hall 4A/4A-206 and Hall 5/5-425.

KDAB is showcasing an IP camera demo written in Qt5 and QML, and running on the QNX Neutrino RTOS and a Freescale i.MX 6 SABRE Lite ARM Cortex-A9 platform. Hall 4/4-622.

KW-Software is demonstrating a PLC development platform developed in collaboration with QNX Software Systems, TI, and koenig-pa. Hall 1/1-446.

MPC Data, a Bsquare Company, is showcasing a high-performance graphics demo based on OpenGL and the QNX Neutrino RTOS. Hall 4A/4A-108.

Xilinx is showcasing a high-precision, low-noise, multi-motor electrical drive demo running on the QNX Neutrino RTOS. Hall 1/1-205.

For more details on these demos, check out the press release that QNX issued this morning.

The joy of talking
Several QNX experts are presenting technical talks at embedded world:

Clear SOUP and COTS Software for Safety-Critical Systems — Tues, Feb 26, 14:00 - 14:45, Session 03
The Joy of Scheduling — Thurs, Feb 28, 10:00 - 10:30, Session 19
Ten Truths about Building Safe Software — Thurs, Feb 28, 14:15 - 15:00, Session 21
Issues in M2M Communication for Software and Firmware Updates — Thurs, Feb 28, 16:30 - 17:00, Session 24

So, if for some strange and inexplicable reason, you want to avoid all things QNX, don't go to embedded world this week. Because once you arrive, there will be no escape. :-)

Acontis releases new EtherCAT motion library for QNX Neutrino operating system

2013-02-13T17:04:00.000-05:00

This just in: Acontis, a leading provider of EtherCAT software and realtime hypervisor technology, has announced that its new EC-Motion product is now available for the QNX Neutrino operating system.

So what, exactly, is EC-Motion? In a nutshell, it's a C/C++ motion control library for EtherCAT drives (i.e. the electronic systems that control industrial motors).

According to Acontis, the EC-Motion library supports all of the single-axis movement commands specified in the PLCopen standard, eliminating the need for additional (and costly) hardware. It also allows the developer to:

implement applications for multi-axis coordinated movements
operate EtherCAT drives in cyclic synchronous position mode (CSP) or cyclic synchronous velocity (CSV) mode
easily integrate the EC-Motion library into custom motion applications as well as into a programmable logic controller (PLC) runtime environment

Here's the EC-Motion architecture at a glance:

Demo on BeagleBone computer
Acontis also announced that it will demonstrate EC-Motion for QNX at the embedded world conference, from February 26 to 28 in Nuremberg. The demo will run on a BeagleBone, a credit-card-sized computer based on Sitara ARM AM335x Cortex-A8 processors from Texas Instruments. The demo will show a Yaskawa Sigma-5 EtherCAT drive running in cyclic synchronous velocity mode.

If you plan to attend embedded world, you can catch the demo at the IXXAT Automation GmbH stand, Hall 1/1-538.

For more details, read the Acontis press release.

10 truths about building safe embedded software systems

2013-02-07T16:14:00.000-05:00

I wish I could remember his exact words. But it has been a long time — 20 years — and my memory has probably added words that he never wrote and removed words that he did write. That said, this is how I remember it:

"We all strive to write bug-free code. But in the real world, bugs can and do occur. Rather than pretend this isn't so, we should adopt a mission-critical mindset and create software architectures that can contain errors and recover from them intelligently."
The "he" in question is my late (and great) colleague Dan Hildebrand. I'm sure that Dan's original sentences were more nuanced and to the point. But the important thing is that he grokked the importance of "culture" when it comes to designing software for safety-critical systems. A culture in which the right attitudes and the right questions, not just the right techniques, are embraced and encouraged.

Which brings me to a paper written by my inimitable colleagues Chris Hobbs and Yi Zheng. It's titled "Ten truths about building safe embedded software systems" and, sure enough, the first truth is about culture. I quote:

"A safety culture is not only a culture in which engineers are permitted to raise questions related to safety, but a culture in which they are encouraged to think of each decision in that light..."
I was particularly delighted to read truth #5, which echoes Dan's advice with notable fidelity:

"Failures will occur: build a system that will recover or move to its design safe state..."
I also remember Dan writing about the importance of software architectures that allow you to diagnose and repair issues in a field-deployed system. Which brings us to truth #10:

"Our responsibility for a safe system does not end when the product is released. It continues until the last device and the last system are retired."
Dan argued for the importance of these truths in 1993. If anything, they are even more important today, when so much more depends on software. If you care about safe software design, you owe it to yourself to read the paper.

Using dynamic code analysis to support FDA approval

2013-02-07T11:05:00.001-05:00

Making a safety case for what goes
in the case

It isn’t enough to create a medical device that is safe to use. You must also demonstrate that it meets safety requirements. Otherwise, how do you know that it is indeed safe? And how can you have it approved by the FDA, MDD, MHRA, or any other regulatory agency?

If you’re familiar with such agencies, you’ll know that they approve the device as a whole, not its constituent parts. And yet, the device manufacturer must still present evidence to demonstrate the dependability of the device software. Hence, close attention to software development practices — together with appropriate validation tools and techniques — is key to securing regulatory approval.

Enter dynamic code analysis. Unlike static analysis, which analyzes source or object code without executing it, dynamic analysis examines compiled code while it is running. As a result, it tests not only the source code, but also the compiler, the linker, the development environment, and, potentially, the target hardware. Dynamic analysis generally involves code coverage analysis and unit testing; together, these can provide an effective way to detect software errors and to demonstrate what software has been exercised.

If you’re interested in how dynamic code analysis can support demonstrations of compliance with safety requirements, look no further than the recent paper, Using Dynamic Software Analysis to Support Medical Device Approval, written by Chris Ault of QNX and Mark Pitchford of LRDA. Among other things, it reviews the key capabilities of dynamic analysis tools and provides tables that map development activities with requirements in the IEC 62304 standard for medical device software.

The world's first computer art?

2013-01-28T11:03:00.000-05:00

The year is 1956. You are a mainframe programmer writing software for a U.S. military computer. You have the opportunity to create the first art to be displayed on a computer screen. What would you draw?

I love nature, so I'd probably choose a tree or a flower or a mountain — something that would be seen as a universal symbol of beauty. As it turns out, the programmer who created the first computer art chose a somewhat different form of beauty: a pin-up girl.

I kid you not.

You can read the entire story on the Atlantic website.

Prefer your whitepapers in German? Have I got a link for you

2013-01-23T14:41:00.000-05:00

Germany has long been a strong market for QNX technology, particularly in the industrial, medical, and automotive sectors. Consider, for example, the many cars from Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche that ship with QNX technology on board.

It's no surprise, then, we've been redoubling our efforts to publish our latest technical whitepapers in German. So if you sprechen sie Deutsch (I hope I said that right) better than you speak English, I invite you to visit the German section of our whitepapers page.

Papers include:

Wann genau benötigt man ein Echtzeitbetriebssystem?

Funktionale Sicherheit komplexer Software-Systeme – Teil 1

HTML5 – die Zukunft des In-Car Infotainment?

For the full list of papers, click here.

New wallpaper for your BlackBerry PlayBook — QNX concept car 2013

2013-01-16T15:00:00.000-05:00

Our good friend (and ace graphics designer) Michael Ball took some excellent photos of the new QNX technology concept car, just before it was shipped to 2013 CES. I thought this photo looked especially cool when displayed on my PlayBook tablet, so I converted it into a wallpaper that you can download from my Flickr page:

To download the wallpaper to your PlayBook:

Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulleroux
Tap the wallpaper.
A larger image will appear. Tap Actions, then tap View all sizes.
An even larger image will appear! Tap Download the Large size of this photo.
Your PlayBook will ask you to enter a file name. Type something meaningful, such as concept_car_wallpaper.jpg, and tap Save.
From the PlayBook home screen, tap Pictures, then tap Downloads.
Tap the wallpaper you want, swipe from the top of the screen and tap Set as Wallpaper.

You're done!

Using Crank Storyboard to create an automotive user interface

2013-01-16T12:25:00.001-05:00

Just how adept is the QNX CAR application platform at supporting a variety of user interface technologies and toolkits?

From the beginning, we've promoted flexibility as a key quality of the QNX CAR application platform. For instance, the platform lets you work with a variety of user interface technologies, including HTML5, Qt, OpenGL ES, and others. What's more, it lets you blend UI components built with different technologies on the same display, at the same time. You're not forced into using a single API or toolkit.

When it came time to build our new technology concept car, we decided to put this flexibility to the test. After all, the whole point of the concept car is to demonstrate the capabilities of the QNX CAR platform. So, for the first time, we tried building a user interface with the Storyboard Suite from Crank Software.

How well did the QNX CAR platform and Storyboard work together? I think the results speak for themselves. For instance:

Of course, this photo can't demonstrate the smooth animations and snappy performance of the car's user interface. For that, I recommend one of the videos shot at CES, including the excellent video from TI.

So why did we choose Storyboard? For one thing, it allowed our concept team to take UI components created in Photoshop and import them directly into their live design. Rather than spend days or weeks recreating the UI in code, the team's engineers were able to start with what the UI designer provided. Which made prototyping and fine-tuning the UI a lot easier.

Mind you, that wasn't the only reason the team used StoryBoard. But instead of listening to me blather about it, check out this video:

Key takeaway: If you're building a UI for your QNX-based system, you owe it to yourself to check out Crank's Storyboard Suite. You can learn more on the Crank website.

Missed the latest QNX Source newsletter? No worries!

2013-01-15T13:17:00.002-05:00

If you follow this blog, you may have noticed that I encourage everyone to sign up for the QNX Source newsletter. It is, in my humble opinion, the best way to keep tabs on the latest QNX videos, press releases, products, software updates, webinars, and whitepapers. (Mind you, I write the newsletter, so perhaps I'm not so humble after all. :)

Seriously, though, I encourage you to subscribe today. If you want to know what you're missing — or if you missed a recent edition — no problem. We're now archiving past issues on the QNX website.

Just click here to visit the newsletter archive, and you can catch up on a whole years' worth of news. (You'll notice that we didn't issue a newsletter in December — but believe me, January will be a doozy.)

Evaluation software for EtherCAT "PLC in a box" now available for download

2013-01-14T15:37:00.001-05:00

In August, I introduced you to a brand new PLC reference platform created by Freescale, IsaGRAF, KPA, and QNX Software Systems. The purpose of the platform is simple: to provide a pre-integrated solution that can significantly reduce the time and cost of developing PLCs and other industrial systems.

Good news is, the software stack for the platform is now available for download. Here's what you get:

ISaGRAF PLC firmware
ISaGRAF 6 workbench for IEC 61499 and IEC 61131-3 standard PLC programming languages
KPA EtherCAT master stack
KPA EtherCAT Studio
QNX Neutrino RTOS for the Freescale QorIQ P1025 tower module

To download the platform software, visit the QNX website — you'll need to set up a MyQNX account, if you haven't already. To run the platform software, you'll need a Freescale P1025 tower module, target slaves, and some software utilities. To learn how to obtain these components, visit the Freescale website.

QNX at 2013 CES: The media's take

2013-01-11T13:44:00.000-05:00

The show ain't over yet, but already, media coverage of the QNX concept car at 2013 CES is pouring in faster than my modest brain can handle. I'm still catching up, but here, in no particular order, are my favorite stories so far.

I'd love to hear what you think of what the media is saying. So before you go, let me know!

New York Times — A Tricked-Out Bentley at CES Shows Off Tech’s Capabilities

Washington Post — CES 2013: Car tech focuses on making the most of your time on the road — safely

Driving.ca — QNX's Bentley gives glimpse of future car tech

Engadget — QNX unveils concept Bentley Continental GT alongside Car Platform 2.0

CNET — QNX concept Bentley showcases future dashboard technologies

Uber Gizmo — QNX Shows Off Bentley Continental GT Concept Car

Car Design News — QNX Car 2 at CES 2013 (video)

CrackBerry — Dan Dodge shows off the QNX Bentley concept car at CES (video)

BerryReview — Monitor RIM’s New Bentley QNX Concept Car @CES from Your Browser

Auto Guide — QNX Previews Tesla-Sized Touch Screen in a Bentley

Engadget — QNX builds in-car speech framework with AT&T's Watson, knows our true intentions

Itbusiness.ca — RIM subsidiary brings in-car speech recognition (and a Bentley) to CES

LAPTOP — QNX Bringing HTML 5, 4G LTE, Video Conferencing to Future Cars

TechnoBuffalo — Chevy, Ford, and QNX at CES 2013 (video)

Financial Post — CES 2013 kicks off with RIM’s QNX showing off car, a step closer to digitized homes

Ottawa Citizen — Ottawa companies use CES to pitch latest products to the world

Tech 2 — CES 2013: QNX shows off Car Platform 2.0 with concept Bentley Continental GT

Blast Magazine — At 2013’s Consumer Electronics Show, car safety has become a hot topic

N4BB — QNX CAR Application Platform 2.0 Chosen by Delphi for Next-Generation Infotainment

That's it for now. I aim to post some more stories and videos early next week. Stay tuned.

This post originally appeared on the QNX auto blog.

QNX-powered Chevy Mylink drives home with Best of CES award

2013-01-10T16:02:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to the infotainment team at Chevrolet! Their next-generation Chevy MyLink system has just won a Best of CES award, in the car tech category. The competition judges were particularly impressed with MyLink's user interface and integration with the car's instrument cluster.

The MyLink system was one of two QNX-powered finalists in this year's competition; the other was Garmin's K2 infotainment platform.

Chevy plans to roll out the new version of MyLink later this year.

This post originally appeared on the QNX auto blog.

Two QNX customers, Chevrolet and Garmin, shortlisted for 2013 Best of CES awards

2013-01-10T13:30:00.003-05:00

Who doesn't love to win an award? Last year, for example, we were absolutely thrilled that our QNX CAR application platform drove home with a Best of CES award. Heck, I'm still excited!

But here's the thing. All of the products and services that QNX offers are designed with one goal in mind: to make our customers successful. The more our customers succeed, the more QNX succeeds. Which is why I am doubly excited today. Because not one, but two customers have nabbed finalist spots at this year's Best of CES awards for their QNX-based products: Chevrolet for its second-generation MyLink system, and Garmin for its K2 infotainment platform.

Congratulations to our friends at Chevrolet and Garmin — I'll be rooting for all of you!

The winners of this year's Best of CES awards will be announced today, at 11 am PT.

This post originally appeared on the QNX auto blog.

Now on YouTube! First video of QNX technology concept car

2013-01-09T21:35:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, some friends from Texas Instruments dropped by our CES booth for a demo of the new QNX concept car. The cameras were rolling, and here's what they caught.

Mark Rigley, head of the QNX concept team, did a fantastic job of guiding TI's Michael Guillory through the car's many features, including the gorgeous HD display powered by TI DLP technology and by a TI OMAP 5 processor. Check it out:

My favorite part? The exceedingly cool video conferencing. What's yours?

This post originally appeared on the QNX auto blog.

QNX unveils brand new concept car (hint: it's a Bentley)

2013-01-08T17:40:00.000-05:00

If you haven't visited the QNX auto blog today, you've been missing all the action. This morning, QNX Software Systems took the wraps off a new technology concept car, based on a specially modified — and drop-dead gorgeous — Bentley Continental GT.

Here's an example of what you've been missing:

I've posted many other images on the QNX auto blog, along with guided tour of the car's many features. So what are you waiting for? Check it out.

Self-baking NAND flash memory promises to last longer — way longer

2012-12-03T13:18:00.000-05:00

Don't get too excited, as no one is talking commercial availability just yet. But a memory manufacturer has developed a way to make NAND flash last more than 1000 times longer than it does today.

Let's rewind a minute. Each memory "cell" in conventional NAND flash has a limited number of program/erase (PE) cycles. Even a read operation weakens the charge that maintains the data bits. As a result, the NAND cells in your notebook, smartphone, thumb drive, or tablet can often handle only a few thousand PE cycles before they start losing bits. And who wants to lose bits?

Enter Macronix. Using a technique that briefly heats individual cells to 800C (yes, hotter than your kitchen stove), their innovative new NAND flash technology can handle 100 million PE cycles.

I must admit, my first reaction was "so what?". People go through mobile devices like potato chips, so do they really need flash memory that keeps running year after year? But then I thought, what if you're embedding flash in a car that might be on the road for 15 years? Or in an industrial control system that might be deployed once and never replaced? (The QNX OS can be found in industrial systems that have run for 15 or 20 years without a hardware upgrade, so this isn't an academic question.)

There's another reason why this is welcome news. As process size shrinks, so does the usable life of NAND flash. The new technology from Macronix may enable our future devices to offer much more memory, without the downside of a short lifespan.

I'm not an expert on flash memory, so please comment if you have further insight as to how this new technology could benefit future devices.

For more on this development, see the articles on Ars Technica and ExtremeTech.