At AWS re:Invent, Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America, a tier-one automotive supplier, announced the availability of Virtual SkipGen™ (vSkipGen™) on AWS Marketplace, to “shift left” the automotive development lifecycle, allowing engineers and developers to start earlier in the process without physical hardware. The new Panasonic vSkipGen is a virtual replica of the physical, 3rd generation Digital Cockpit solution, SkipGen – marking the latest in Panasonic and Amazon’s ongoing collaboration to evolve the eCockpit. vSkipGen enables automakers to decouple software development from the hardware development lifecycle to reduce time to market and help improve software quality.
Panasonic Automotive’s vSkipGen leverages the industry standard VirtIO-based device virtualization technology to offer several guest operating systems, including fully optimized support for Android Automotive for infotainment and Automotive Grade Linux for cluster vehicle domains. It supports needed automotive peripherals and sensor simulation for the development of modern cockpit systems. The virtual platform is truly “cloud-native,” and further utilizes the cloud servers’ computing capability to provide hardware acceleration for multimedia, graphic, audio, and display rendering. Collectively, this enables exceptional performance and helps deliver premium experiences.
“The vSkipGen on AWS has been designed for those looking to work with the most advanced Software Defined Vehicle features available today,” said Andrew Poliak, chief technology officer, Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America. “Our partnership with AWS to run cockpit domains as virtual machines in the cloud is critical to ensure development teams can seamlessly work in parallel, enable 3rd party and app development, conduct more predictive integration and testing earlier in the process.”
Panasonic has invested in advancing the software defined vehicle to support not only market growth but also work toward Panasonic’s GREEN IMPACT mission. This automotive solution is the latest innovation to reflect the company’s environmental goals – eliminating the need of a development or prototype hardware platform, and thus saving resources and components.
About Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America
Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America is a division company of Panasonic Corporation of North America and is a leading global supplier of automotive infotainment and connectivity system solutions. Panasonic Automotive is head quartered in Peachtree City, Georgia, with sales, marketing and engineering operations in Farmington Hills, Mich. For more information on Panasonic Automotive, please visit https://na.panasonic.com/us/automotive-solutions