Tier 1 automotive customer: File System use case
Our data management software ensures data reliability and high performance for all data-critical systems using automotive flash memory, such as ADAS, DVR, EDR, Telematics, Instrument Cluster and infotainment.
For a Tier 1 automotive customer, our software has helped them ensure more road safety and fast boot times through the implementation of our file system inside the Digital Instrument Cluster.
In automotive there are certain expectations when it comes to rebooting a car after a power loss. Imagine a situation where one is simultaneously utilizing different applications in an infotainment system and suddenly the car shuts down. What actually happens in the back-end of an infotainment system when the car has to reboot?
- The bootloader initializes the hardware and loads the OS (may take about 1-2 seconds, depending on hardware)
- The kernel is decompressed and started (takes around 1-5 seconds, depending on hardware, compression algorithm and kernel size)
- Init system starts and loads system services (around 3-60 seconds, depending on amount of services and their dependencies)
It is imperative for the user to utilize the system as fast as possible as soon as the car is turned on. As mentioned before, the bootloader initialization should take at the latest 3 seconds, after which at least a car logo should appear on the display.
So what is the role of our high-performance file system in this scenario? Whenever a power-loss occurs during run-time, it’s crucial that, on top of all the initialization processes mentioned before, a corrupted and disordered file system does not slow down boot speed or have incomplete data after reboot.
Our customer chose Tuxera’s Reliance Edge file system because it ensures consistently fast boot times, data reliability and a small footprint. Because the Reliance Edge is always in a valid state, even at start up, checks or scans of the storage media as part of system initialization are unnecessary. The FS is transactional, which means that after a power loss, the FS reverts to the last known good state. More importantly, it is reliable because it implements an atomic, transactional model where changes either occur in their entirety or not at all.