Instrument clusters, warning indicators, maintenance reminders, and other driver information systems present an array of data about your vehicle – everything from speed, direction, and fuel efficiency to tire pressure and the current song track. Creating reliable, cost-effective driver information products is a complex challenge for automotive companies; to succeed, they must satisfy demands for:

• Usability – Vehicle buyers have been conditioned by their smartphones and tablets to demand a user experience that is both attractive and intuitive. Automakers must somehow satisfy this expectation while conveying a growing amount of vehicle data within limited real estate.
  
• Design flexibility – Automakers are replacing physical gauges with reconfigurable digital instrument clusters that, when re-used across vehicle models, reduce bill of materials costs and speed time-to-market. To achieve this reusability, automakers need to base their systems on an inherently flexible software platform.
• System consolidation – The auto industry is moving towards integrated cockpits that encompass three primary displays: instrument cluster, head-up display (HUD), and infotainment system. This trend is driving demand for consolidated hardware and software platforms that can handle all of these functions simultaneously and cost effectively.
  
• Certification – For safety’s sake, driver information systems need to present vehicle speed and other data in a timely, accurate, and reliable fashion. In fact, more and more driver information subsystems will need to be certified to the ISO 26262 functional safety standard for road vehicles, creating a new and time-intensive challenge for manufacturers.

To meet driver information system challenges head on, manufacturers need a flexible platform that:

• can support different user interfaces and feature levels across a range of vehicle models and price points
• works with a wide variety of hardware platforms popular in the auto industry
• offers a proven track record in safety and reliability, preferably supported by certifications
• is backed by a company with the expertise and experience needed to minimize safety certification efforts
• achieves desirable performance even on lower-end hardware with modest processing power
• maximizes return on software investment by making it easy to create displays for a variety of vehicle models
• provides comprehensive user interface capabilities, including hardware-accelerated graphics, to create compelling, high-performance displays

At QNX Software Systems, we address the requirements of driver information systems through our comprehensive graphics framework and safety-certified OS. The component-based architecture of our technology promotes application scalability and software re-use, enabling manufacturers to create driver information displays for multiple vehicle models more efficiently.

QNX screen technology provides a highly flexible user interface framework based on the HTML5 open standard. This support for open standards helps manufacturers tap into a larger pool of developers and protect their HMI software investments. QNX screen technology:

• supports hardware-accelerated OpenGL ES graphics for smooth and responsive needles, gauges, and graphics transitions
• seamlessly blends applications and components created in OpenGL ES, HTML5, Qt, and other toolkits on the same display, at the same time
• can drive multiple displays – HUD, gauges, vehicle information displays – simultaneously

Functional safety certification

At QNX, we have extensive experience in functional safety certification. The QNX^® Neutrino^® RTOS, which forms the foundation of most QNX products, has a long history in realtime safety-critical systems and has been certified to multiple international functional safety standards including the widely-applied IEC 61508 and the new favorite of the automotive market – ISO 26262. We have supported many customers in various markets through their certification efforts and can provide valuable guidance and assistance to manufacturers to control certification effort and cost.

The QNX OS for Automotive Safety is a product designed to answer the needs of functional safety for automotive OEMs and Tier 1’s. Certified to ISO 26262 ASIL D, the product can be used as a reliable platform for driver information systems that have safety-critical requirements. The certification is provided by TÜV Rheinland, an international leader in the sustained development of safety and quality. The QNX OS for Automotive Safety product not only delivers a pre-certified operating system, but also includes the qualified tool chain that can be used to develop safety-critical applications with ISO 26262 requirements. Please refer to the QNX OS for Automotive Safety product page for product details.

Coupled with pre-certified safety product designed specifically for the automotive market, QNX also offers another essential ingredient to success – technical expertise. Our automotive solutions team is a seasoned engineering force with a track record of helping customer deliver projects on time, every time. Our safety solutions team is equipped with deep expertise and experience in safety design. The engineers on the safety solutions team can provide training and consulting services on building dependable systems. They have assisted many customers in the design and development of safety-critical systems for various markets, resulting in successful certification efforts.

Driver information systems must often integrate intellectual property from multiple technology partners. To help our customers reduce integration costs and speed development, we've built a comprehensive ecosystem that includes silicon vendors (Freescale, NVIDIA, Renesas, Texas Instruments, and others) and tool vendors (Klocwork, LDRA, STMicroelectronics, Verum, and others).