GENIVI Infotainment System Coming from Magneti Marelli

The efforts made by the GENIVI alliance to provide an open source development platform for in-car infotainment systems are beginning to turn into reality, after one of the biggest manufacturers of such systems, Magneti Marelli, announced it is working together with embedded and mobile software Wind River.

The new solution to be created by Magneti will be compliant with the GENIVI standard, meaning it can be used by car manufacturers to meet their own requirements. It can support control module or “head unit” architectures specific to any manufacturer, allowing each of them to target the needs of their buyers.

“GENIVI provides an innovative platform that allows car manufacturers to offer the next generation of connectivity and multimedia services while retaining the distinguishing features that make up the essence of their brands,” said Alexander Kocher, vice president and general manger for automotive solutions at Wind River.

The first deployment of the system currently under development will be in BMW vehicles, at a date yet to be announced. Magneti is also involved in the development of an infotainment system with Harman, who has been selected by BMW as the provider of the next generation systems back in 2010.

This system includes features such as iSpeech, wireless connectivity, mobile office, navigation, and advanced telematics and will use an NVIDIA system-on-a-chip (SOC) technology,

“Starting with BMW, Wind River and Magneti Marelli are providing car manufacturers with an IVI solution, delivering the latest infotainment technologies via open source software, which promotes the acceleration of innovation while reducing time-to-market and development costs,” added Kocher.