Intel To Develop Safety-Critical Linux OS Distribution

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel To Develop Safety-Critical Linux OS Distribution

Imad Sousou of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center has announced their plans to develop a safety-critical Linux distribution. This Linux distribution will be geared for running on safety-compliant solutions from autonomous vehicles to drones and more...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Safety-Critical-Linux-OS

[M@GOid]

The cynical in me is thinking: "A safety-critical distro from the guys of IME and Meltdown fame. What could go wrong?".

[tildearrow]

Why don't they fix their processors first before doing this?

[WolfpackN64]

Why don't they fix their processors first before doing this?

Amen to that. It's not like their is an unfixable problem with x86, but with Whiskey and Amber Lake, they're up to their third iteration of Kaby Lake? Without hardware security fixes. For a company as big as Intel, this is just rediculous.

[LaeMing]

Hmmmm... Intel... safety...

[rastersoft]

And everybody will run it on AMD processors :-D

[Jabberwocky]

This reminds me of watching suits, pro bono case to improve their public image.

[Girolamo_Cavazzoni]

but with Whiskey and Amber Lake, they're up to their third iteration of Kaby Lake?

Actually it's the fourth iteration of Skylake...

[coder]

Is this an example of "embrace-and-extend", or are there going to be significant upstream contributions from this effort?

Interestingly, Intel doesn't even have chips that play into a number of the listed safety-critical applications, since cancelling Edison and their low-power Atom-lineage SoCs.

[L_A_G]

Why don't they fix their processors first before doing this?

As much as I dislike Intel, I'm pretty sure they're working on that right now and that's going to be worked on by a different set of engineers. Also, with the turnaround times for high end silicon, it'll still be a couple of years before anything with substantial fixes will be on store shelves regardless of how many stops they pull.