BlackBerry drives its QNX technology to the cloud with AWS
BlackBerry has announced an extension of its use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) that will make the company’s QNX technology available to mission-critical embedded systems developers for the first time ever in the cloud.
BlackBerry QNX demonstrated the company's industry-leading Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) along with its artificial intelligence (AI) data platform – BlackBerry IVY – running natively on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, powered by AWS Graviton2 processors at AWS re:Invent 2022 this week.
The BlackBerry QNX RTOS running in the cloud functions as a cloud-native developer workbench and can be used independently – or in conjunction with – BlackBerry IVY, a cloud-connected automotive AI platform co-developed by BlackBerry and AWS.
With the increased power and performance afforded by being able to access the QNX Neutrino RTOS in the cloud, industries such as automotive, robotics, medical devices, industrial controls, aerospace and defence and others stand to benefit from reduced development time while ensuring software reliability through testing, verification, and validation.
"Arming our customers with our foundational QNX software products in the cloud is a game changer for embedded developers as they will have easy access and scale available at their fingertips," says Grant Courville, Vice President, Product Management and Strategy, BlackBerry QNX. "For developers of mission-critical embedded systems, this will help them accelerate collaboration and velocity across the entire product development and deployment lifecycle. With our trusted, industry-leading OS soon to be available on AWS, we're confident the potential for efficiencies and cost savings will resonate across the IoT industry."
Automotive AI-driven solutions in the cloud
As one of the first applications, select customer developers will be able to fully leverage cloud instances of BlackBerry IVY. At AWS re:Invent 2022, the demonstration showed how developers can leverage the cloud to streamline the development, testing, and integration of automotive AI-driven solutions that can then be deployed to run in-vehicle on automotive-grade hardware.
Early access versions of the OS in the Cloud project have been made available to select OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, including Marelli, a leading Tier 1 global automotive supplier, currently trialling the solution in developing next-generation automotive technology.
"The QNX AMI enabled our developers to reduce team ramp-up times significantly and achieve a development agility never experienced before," says Yannick Hoyau, VP – Engineering and Innovation Electronic Systems at Marelli. "It has revolutionised our way of working – we can now test the code that goes into the car - in all its variants - without the need for hardware. That is the real pivot we were waiting for to help transition to software-defined vehicles. As a Tier 1 supplier, we are proud that MInD-Xp, our Integrated Cockpit DCU, will be among the first on the market to adopt this approach."
Wendy Bauer, General Manager of AWS Automotive says: "Connecting our partners with other leaders around the technology that is transforming industries is what powers the innovation possible on AWS. Unlocking the potential of the cloud via our Graviton2 processors and seeing the ways companies like BlackBerry are making meaningful change – and helping enable hardware parity in automotive development - is energising for AWS and the industry at large."
