Renesas Electronics announces the availability of the R-Car reference package for Android™ for Renesas R-Car automotive system-on-chips (SoCs). This package supports Android 8.0, the latest OS announced by Google on August 22, 2017.
Android 8.0 is the first version of Android OS to include support for functions required in automotive systems. The combination of this OS with Renesas’ robust and highly secure automotive SoC simplifies development of automotive Android platforms. The R-Car reference package for Android comprises the R-Car reference board and an extension board as hardware environment, and the board support package (BSP) as software support.The R-Car reference package for Android lowers barrier of entry to the automotive market for software developers who have no experience with automotive systems, while software developers without Android development experience can take advantage of Android’s powerful ecosystem and existing application resources when using the reference package.
The Android platform is widely used worldwide, mainly in smartphones. An ecosystem comprising resourceful application developers has been formed based on Android. While application of this OS to areas other than smartphones has been progressing within this ecosystem, it has been necessary to customize Android for use in development of automotive systems. The latest Android 8.0 is configured, for the first time, with a framework for automotive application support as a standard component, making it possible to use Android 8.0 for automotive applications out of the box. The high-level cloud services for smartphones will now be available in vehicles, and is expected to spur the development of new cloud-based services for cars.
Further information about Renesas Electronics Europe is available at http://www.renesas.com.
