NavInfo joins Linaro 96Boards Steering Committee
Posted on Thursday 14 March 2019, by Suzy
Linaro Ltd, the open source collaborative engineering organization developing software for the Arm® ecosystem, announced today that NavInfo, a leading digital map provider, with service offering ranging from location-based big data vertical application, to semiconductors, connected vehicle service and autonomous driving solutions, has joined the 96Boards initiative as a Steering Committee member.
As the autonomous vehicle industry develops, solutions such as NavInfo’s HD Map (High Definition Map), high accuracy positioning and automotive-grade semiconductors for ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) and AD (autonomous driving) could benefit from standardized platforms for prototyping, product development and testing. 96Boards Automotive aims to encourage the development of heterogeneous computing platform enabling silicon providers, system integrators and car manufacturers to fast prototype, develop and early integrate with different sensory subsystems as well as vehicle control board without lock-in to specific suppliers.
“Autonomous Driving technology is at its defining moment and we know that a collaborative platform that works across different systems all around the world will enable the industry fast prototype and develop mass production solutions,” said Li Yang, Autonomous Driving AI Director of NavInfo. “We are excited to join Steering Committee and work closely with market leaders from software and hardware community as we are eager to see how NavInfo’s HD Map and other solutions will empower partners and clients to build an autonomous future.”
96Boards is Linaro’s initiative to build a single worldwide software and hardware community across low-cost development boards using the latest Arm technology. A large range of products compliant with the 96Boards specifications is available worldwide and this is supplemented with additional hardware functionality provided through standardized mezzanine boards. The 96Boards Steering Committee provides a neutral forum in which companies can cooperate closely to offer semiconductor products in a standard form factor for rapid product development, testing and prototyping.
“In recent months 96Boards has made significant headway in the automotive space, co-launching the Autoware Foundation as one of the founding members and welcoming new members engaged in the automotive sector to the 96Boards Steering Committee”, said Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards. “We are excited to see NavInfo join the Steering Committee as we believe their involvement will further help accelerate adoption of a choice of Arm-based solutions in the automotive space. The joining of companies like NavInfo, together with leading Lidar providers such as Robosense and LeiShen Intelligent Technology, further proves the heterogeneous computing platform initiated by 96Boards Automotive not only appeals to the SoC vendors but also to sensor and map service providers.”
As a founding member of the Autoware Foundation, Linaro’s 96Boards also has involvement in a vendor-neutral, collaborative software solution that complements NavInfo’s product line and together they offer a comprehensive and reliable software foundation and map solutions for ADAS and Autonomous Driving. The Autoware and NavInfo solutions are already in use by many of the world’s leading automotive brands, but this is the first time that they have been brought together in a vendor-neutral collaborative enterprise.
About Linaro
Linaro leads collaboration in the Arm ecosystem and helps companies work with the latest open source technology and accelerate deployment of Arm-based solutions. The company has over 300 engineers working on more than 70 open source projects, developing and optimizing software and tools, ensuring smooth product roll outs, and reducing maintenance costs. Work happens across segments including datacenter & cloud, edge & fog, IoT & embedded, consumer, machine intelligence, telecom & networking, autonomous vehicles, and high performance computing. Linaro is distribution neutral: it wants to provide the best software foundations to everyone by working upstream, and to reduce non-differentiating and costly low-level fragmentation. The effectiveness of the Linaro approach has been demonstrated by Linaro’s growing membership, and by Linaro consistently being listed as one of the top five company contributors, worldwide, to Linux kernels since 3.10.
