CES 2025: QNX Cabin Demo Shows How Solution Can Accelerate Digital Cockpit Development
At CES 2025, QNX (a division of BlackBerry) provided a demonstration of its QNX Cabin solution. QNX’s Senior Software Developer Mike Shane gave Counterpoint Research Associate Director Greg Basich an overview of the demonstration and its key elements. The demonstration showed multiple operating systems running on a single Qualcomm system-on-chip (SoC), including the QNX Operating System and guest operating systems, including Android Automotive and Linux for running consumer-facing applications.
CES 2025: QNX Cabin Demo
Key takeaways from the demonstration
• The demonstration included a display showing a total of 13 different screens in a vehicle’s cabin and the different functions supported by each screen.
• QNX Cabin is designed to support mixed-criticality environments through virtualization support and by providing a mechanism that allows for communication between operating systems.
• The company used the VirtIO open standard to enable the use and rapid integration of guest operating systems in a virtualized environment (such as running on the QNX Hypervisor). This helps reduce development time.
• One of the main points communicated during the demonstration was that if any software fails, that will not affect the other software running in the digital cockpit electronic control unit.
• The demo also showed the use of QNX Sound running on the CPU rather than on a dedicated digital signal processor (DSP). Shane noted that audio processing can be shifted to other available CPUs, as required.
Analyst takeaways
• Through its QNX Cabin and other demonstrations at CES 2025, the company highlighted the major automotive industry trend of accelerating software development through a mix of approaches.
• QNX is using open standards (such as VirtIO), pre-integration of software, and providing a cloud-based development environment.
Author
Greg Basich
As Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, Greg Basich focuses on the automotive industry. Prior to joining Counterpoint Research, Greg worked at TechInsights and Strategy Analytics for a combined 11 years, providing market intelligence and advisory services to companies in the automotive electronics market and related verticals. Prior to his career as an analyst, Greg was a business-to-business journalist at Bobit Business Media for 13 years, focused on automotive interiors, aftermarket electronics, and the fleet market. Greg holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, San Diego.
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