A number of major companies, including DaimlerChrysler (Auburn Hills, Mich.), Delphi Delco Automotive Systems (Kokomo, Ind.) and Visteon Corp. (Dearborn, Mich.), announced they will use Linux or other open-source operating systems in selected electronic products.

The automotive industry's growing use of such software comes at a time when the manufacturing world in general has begun to take more serious notice of the upstart Linux OS. LinuxWorld, a semi-annual trade show and conference that kicks off in New York on Tuesday, has seen a rapid rise in interest among several key business sectors, particularly maufacturing. Show management sold 90 percent more floor space than last year and expects a 33 percent increase in the number of exhibitors over last year.

"We're growing at a rate of about 50 percent per show," said Rob Scheschareg, vice president of events for IDG World Expo, which owns and manages the conference. "And a lot of the interest in our companies is coming from manufacturers."

For the auto industry, however, use of openly available software is a startling turnabout. Only a few years ago, carmakers wrote all of their own operating systems and carefully guarded every line of source code.

"What we are seeing in the automotive community is no different than what we are seeing in the rest of the software world," said Daya Nadamuni, senior analyst for Gartner Dataquest (San Jose, Calif.). "It's just that car manufacturers have never done anything like this before."

Indeed, the drive toward open-source software is unprecedented among carmakers. This week at DaimlerChrysler, engineers unveiled the concept version of the Infotronic in-car PC, built atop a Linux-based OS from Red Hat Inc. (Research Triangle Park, N.C.). And Delphi Delco rolled out a Mobile Productivity Center that employs eCOS, an open-source code from Red Hat, earlier this month.

Similarly, Visteon has announced it will soon introduce an in-dash MP3 player powered by an internal computer running embedded Linux. And Applied Data Systems Inc. (Columbia, Md.) has said that it is making a Linux-based embedded computer for use by a major automaker in a multimedia application.

These recent successes may be the tip of the iceberg, said the makers of Linux and other open-source systems. "There's a big play being made right now for open-source," said Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer of Red Hat. "And the auto industry is no exception."

Royalty-free and open

All of the automotive companies cite common reasons for using embedded Linux. For starters, open-source code is royalty-free, so automakers and suppliers can cut product costs. Also, many automotive-software developers like open-source code because it can be easily modified. "The kernel and the source code are readily available for anyone who wants to do anything with it," said LinuxWorld producer Scheschareg.

The biggest reason for the auto industry's growing interest in open-source, however, may lie in the blossoming of the Linux community itself. "It's like the Field of Dreams," analyst Nadamuni said. "If you build it, they will come. The Linux community has proven that if you have a Linux operating system, people will come and write applications."

Many industry analysts believe that Linux applications could ride the same wave that carried Palm computers to success. "The Palm computer was successful because so many developers wanted to write applications for it," said Tiemann of Red Hat. "Using that criterion, Linux should be incredibly successful because it has about 10 times as many developers behind it."

The powerful user community was one of the big reasons behind Delco Delphi's choosing eCOS for its new Communiport Mobile Productivity Center. This electronic gizmo synchronizes an Ericsson cell phone with a Palm V or Palm Vx personal digital assistant, then allows drivers to access the data and make hands-free phone calls. It uses so-called grapheme-to-phoneme conversion technology from Lernout & Hauspie to take information such as addresses or e-mail from the Palm and read it back to the driver.

"The fact that it was open-source meant that we could leverage developers all over the world and use their expertise as they build on top of this operating system," said Mark Kady, software competency leader for Delco Delphi. "The open-source community will come up with ideas that no one else has ever thought of before."

Posix API

Delco engineers liked eCOS in particular because it offered a small footprint, critical for a deeply embedded application. The eCOS operating system employs a scalable Posix application programming interface, which enables developers to use Linux on top of it. "The beauty of it is that you can tap into the familiarity that users have with the Linux platform," Tiemann said. "But 'under the hood,' you still have a very fuel-efficient engine."

Thanks to eCOS, Kady said that Delco was able to maintain a footprint of less than 50 kbytes in the Mobile Productivity Center. With a traditional Linux-based system, the footprint would have been closer to 500 kbytes, or even up to 1 Mbyte, he said.

Similarly, Visteon's Mach MP3 Jukebox, a vehicle audio system that will be released in the third quarter, is reportedly licensed from a design that uses an internal embedded Linux-based computer. The new device, which enables users to listen to MP3 music through their existing audio systems, plays up to 4,000 digital audio tracks.

Engineers say that Linux appeals to developers of audio and other automotive multimedia equipment because it provides them with more leeway than they would have with a proprietary OS. "Some developers like to have access to the source code," said Fred Salloum, director of marketing for Applied Data Systems. "They feel they can make their application work better if they can get into the guts of the operating system."

Salloum said that Applied Data will use Linux in an upcoming embedded automotive computer because Linux allows for manipulation of the source code, and because it is royalty-free. "Automakers are just like anybody else," he said. "They want to keep their costs down."

Industry analysts believe that in most cases, automakers will use commercially written open-source systems. The reason: They can't depend on the community at large to come back and fix bugs in an open-source system. "Most users will want a commercial provider of Linux who will make sure it is bug-free," Nadamuni said. "That way, you don't get the equivalent of a 'blue screen of death' while you're driving along and listening to music."