Wind Forum Korea 2023, 200 Developers Participate
Building a software-defined architecture… Emphasizing safety

Wind River shares its software-defined future transformation technology.

On the 25th, Wind River held 'Wind Forum Korea 2023' at the Intercontinental in Samseong-dong and held a press conference to introduce the latest offering updates and market strategies. The event was themed 'Software-defined Future Transformation 2.0' and was attended by 200 researchers and developers working in the automotive, communications, defense aviation, and industrial fields.

“As many enterprises move from hardware-defined to software-defined to cloud-native architectures, mission-critical applications that require the highest safety-critical standards present a variety of challenges in development and certification,” said Jae-Kyung Kim, president and CEO of Wind River Asia Pacific. “Wind River has the most comprehensive edge-to-cloud software portfolio, and its technology is embedded in 2 billion edge devices worldwide. “Based on our expertise in the field, we will provide support to enhance the competitiveness of our companies,” he said.

“What was previously hardware-defined will now be software-defined on servers,” said Kim. “The reason software-defined vehicles (SDVs) are taking off is because of optimization.”

As architectures become more complex, challenges that must be addressed when transitioning to a software-defined foundation include software complexity, modern development approaches, ensuring secure connectivity, security, and edge data management. As deployment targets diversify, such as automobiles and elevators, software development environments become more complex and prices can increase, so cost optimization is key.

“Software development can be done well, but the problem is that it comes at a high cost, so automation is essential to achieve efficiency,” said Ishua Srinivasan, vice president of engineering.

In particular, as the types of devices increase, the number of nodes for edge computing increases, and the demand for safety and security increases, development should focus on this. Real-time is directly related to this. For example, braking systems and autonomous driving systems require real-time performance.

The event introduced updates to Wind River’s cloud platform ‘Wind River Studio’, the world’s No. 1 RTOS (real-time operating system) ‘VxWorks’, and simulation software ‘Simics’. In addition, the Automotive Track shared the latest industry trends such as preparation for software-defined vehicles (SDVs), cybersecurity in the automotive industry, and technologies for connected autonomous driving.

Wind River's RROS, VxWorks, has secured predictability, scalability, and functionality. Because it is fast in response, it takes less time than existing OSs to execute specific elements. It also has a safe critical system, which can resolve system malfunction cases.

Wind River helps to provide seamless updates by enabling work in a single window for maintenance, operation, and management after deployment in the development, testing, and simulation stages of software. In the virtual lab, test automation can be supported so that tests can be performed on real devices or simulated device environments. In terms of operations, software life cycle management is emphasized at the device level. It supports plans for applying software to devices, continuously updating, and managing bugs.

Wind River expressed confidence in the SDV market, which is expected to grow to approximately KRW 630 trillion by 2025. Wind River supports next-generation automotive infrastructure software to implement software-defined vehicle functions such as high-performance computing, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) networking, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

“SDV is a concept that has become a reality and is making its mark,” said Vice President Ishua. “However, because the maturity levels and adoption levels for Level 1 and Level 2 are different, we plan to grow together with various offers and continue to collaborate with other companies.” He also said, “Wind River will be the company that provides all the foundations for SDV.”

Kim, President and CEO of APAC, said, “There are many global automotive OEMs in Korea, and Wind River has invested heavily in them, starting with engineering, and we will continue to work with them in the future.”

Meanwhile, Wind River, the No. 1 OS offering company, was founded in 1981 and aims to have 1,700 global customers and $425 million in sales. Wind River is used in 2 billion products worldwide across various industries, including aerospace defense Boeing, NASA, factory automation, robots, and UAM.