Renesas Electronics’ R-Car SoC Accelerates Development of In-Vehicle Infotainment Applications with Support of Automotive Grade Linux Platform

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced that it has started volume shipment of its first R-Car system-on-chip (SoC) incorporating Automotive Grade Linux (AGL)-based software. AGL is a cross-industry effort to develop a fully open software stack for the connected car.

Renesas considers AGL as an essential step to expand the base of software developers. The Renesas R-Car Starter Kit and AGL-based software is accelerating the development of automotive in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) applications, and moving automakers closer to the realization of connected cars. Renesas is a platinum member of the AGL Collaborative Project, and automakers such as Toyota Motor Corporation are participating to promote open source software development. By supporting these activities, Renesas anticipates it will become possible for more system manufacturers to easily develop automotive applications, even for developers who are not accustomed to embedded application software development, which will contribute to accelerating IVI deployments.

Renesas’ first R-Car SoC incorporating AGL platform-based software has started volume shipment for Toyota’s new 2018 Camry, which is scheduled to debut late this summer in the U.S. and will be Toyota’s first car model to run Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) software for its infotainment system.

“Toyota and Renesas have promoted AGL activities together from the very start. By adopting Renesas’ R-Car SoC for our infotainment system of the new 2018 Toyota Camry, we managed to promote system developments in cooperation with both Renesas and AGL,” said Kenichi Murata, Group Manager of Connected Strategy & Planning, Connected Company at Toyota Motor Corporation. “Moving forward, I am confident that we will be able to evolve these industry standard open platforms even further and accelerate the development of new IVI systems.”

“Renesas is a passionate and active supporter of Automotive Grade Linux, The Linux Foundation and open source, and has been actively involved in the AGL community and as a board member,” said Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux, The Linux Foundation. “I am very delighted to see products on the market running AGL software and expect to see wider industry adoption in the near future.”

Renesas will continue to promote open source activities such as the AGL platform effort and, along with our partner companies, will lead automotive information system development in the connected-car era.