Toyota, Intel, Ericsson, with friends, have formed a new “Automotive Edge Computing Consortium” to “develop an ecosystem for connected cars to support emerging services such as intelligent driving, the creation of maps with real-time data and driving assistance based on cloud computing.”
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, NTT DOCOMO and DENSO Corporation also signed up to the project, according to The Register.
The group said that with the growth of ‘big data’ they need to team up with the driverless future. Come 2025, the vehicles on Earth’s roads will send a combined fleet 10 exabytes per month ( one exabyte is one quintillion bytes in short scale).
All that data, the consortium reckons, will need “new architectures of network and computing infrastructure to support distributed resources and topology-aware storage capacity.”
The consortium will therefore “focus on increasing network capacity to accommodate automotive big data in a reasonable fashion between vehicles and the cloud by means of edge computing and more efficient network design.”
Members promise to “develop use cases for emerging mobile devices with a particular focus on the automotive industry, bringing them to standard bodies, industry consortiums and solution providers.”
The members see themselves as getting the motor running, but plan to “invite relevant global technology leaders and expand the consortium.” But not, according to launch documents, other car companies.
Toyota is the world’s largest auto-maker, albeit not far ahead of Volkswagen and General Motors.
Yet with market share of over 10%, Toyota can influence the supply chain and make sure its preferred tech pops up elsewhere.
The company’s already shown a liking for in-car computers by adopting automotive Linux for its infotainment systems.
Add new comment
Read our comment policy before posting your viewpoints