Red Hat announced that its In-Vehicle Operating System has achieved functional safety certification as a Safety Element out-of-Context (SEooC) against the ISO 26262 Edition 2, 2018- Level ASIL-B standard. The company plans to make the platform generally available in the third quarter of 2025.
The new operating system is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is designed to meet the safety and risk management requirements for in-vehicle, operator-critical computer systems in the automotive industry. Red Hat says this platform will support applications such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), digital cockpits, body control, telematics, infotainment, and AI model integration.
“Bringing Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System to market sets an inflection point for the automotive industry’s shift toward software-defined vehicles. Built on the proven backbone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the platform enables automakers to accelerate innovation, enhance safety and strengthen system security while embracing an open source approach to drive greater flexibility and collaboration. We’re excited to help transform the driving experience by empowering the automotive ecosystem with a more scalable, reliable and open platform,” said Francis Chow, vice president and general manager, In-Vehicle Operating System and Edge at Red Hat.
The company collaborated with exida for functional safety and cybersecurity certification. Jonathan Moore, director of Advanced Systems at exida stated: “Congratulations. Red Hat has successfully demonstrated that this first release of Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System meets the highly sought after exida standard for certification to ISO 26262 ASIL-B. The exida ANAB accreditation is widely regarded as the toughest in the world and requires a higher quality of technical expertise and comprehensive product review of any certification body. This results in products that are safer, more secure, easier to use and more reliable. With this latest certification of the Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System, Red Hat has shown they more than meet the ISO 26262 process framework requirements with their innovative ‘upstream first’ focus on technical solutions developed in open collaboration with experts around the world. In addition, since the most recent concept certificate was issued by exida in January, many Red Hat kernel maintainers and senior software development experts have successfully studied for and completed the exida Functional Safety Practitioner (FSP) qualification underlying their commitment to both open source and functional safety throughout their safety activities. Congratulations again to the entire global team involved in this complex endeavor for demonstrating that an operating system based on open source components can more than satisfy the intricate integrity requirements of ISO 26262.”
Red Hat has worked with partners such as Arm, Intel, NXP, Qualcomm, Renesas and Texas Instruments to pre-qualify its operating system on relevant hardware platforms. At launch, certification will begin with a Renesas device followed by a Qualcomm device.
Kazuma Sugimoto from Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., commented: “Nissan is joining forces with Red Hat to develop its next-generation software-defined vehicle platform, powered by Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System. This collaboration will help propel Nissan’s transformation into a software-defined vehicle leader, positioning the company in the evolving mobility landscape.”
Aish Dubey from Renesas said: “Renesas has always been an advocate for and active contributor to open source software. Since the announcement of Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System availability on the RoX SDV platform, we’ve been excited about our collaboration. Today, we’re proud to announce that the first certification of Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System will be on the Renesas R-Car S4 platform. This combined solution gives customers the flexibility to design a wide range of scalable automotive compute systems, from ADAS and IVI to gateways and cross-domain fusion, without compromising on safety or security.”
Laxmi Rayapudi from Qualcomm Technologies added: “Congratulations to Red Hat on achieving the ASIL-B certification for Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System. This milestone is a testament to Red Hat’s commitment to safety and innovation in the automotive industry. Qualcomm Technologies is proud to be a collaborator along this journey, and we look forward to providing our mutual customers with a safety-certified operating system that will drive the future of automotive technology.”
Red Hat also provides customers with a Safety Guidance document containing Assumptions of Use (AoUs) and related artifacts as well as a tailored software development kit (SDK). The company states these resources are intended to help manufacturers move innovations developed in cloud environments into vehicles efficiently.
