Welcome to the Automotive SIG

This site contains general information about the Automotive SIG, as well as how to contribute to the repository and how to build and download images.

The Automotive SIG manages several artifacts:

Automotive Stream Distribution (AutoSD)

The primary deliverable of the Automotive SIG is AutoSD, a binary distribution developed within the SIG that is a public, in-development preview of the upcoming Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System (OS). AutoSD is CentOS Stream, with divergences that meet unique automotive use cases, which might include new, automotive-specific packages and rebuilds or reconfigurations of existing CentOS Stream packages. For more information about AutoSD, see AutoSD key features.

RPM repositories

These are RPM repositories produced by the Automotive SIG to enhance AutoSD. New packages or features can be developed and hosted there to expand the capabilities of AutoSD. For more information, see Automotive SIG repositories.

Sample images

These are images built with OSBuild using packages from AutoSD, the Automotive SIG repositories, or other sources. They are examples of how to use AutoSD. For more information, see Working with sample images, sample manifests, automotive-image-builder targets, and Deploying sample apps.

For more information about the Automotive SIG charter, members, or goal, see About the Automotive SIG Community.

For more information about how to engage with the Automotive SIG, see Community for communication channels and meeting information.

AutoSD overview

Open-source development

AutoSD is the upstream binary distribution that serves as the public, in-development preview of Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System (OS). AutoSD is downstream of CentOS Stream, so it retains most of the CentOS Stream code with a few divergences, such as an optimized automotive-specific kernel rather than CentOS Stream’s kernel package. Red Hat In-Vehicle OS is based on both AutoSD and RHEL, both of which are downstreams of CentOS Stream. For more information, see AutoSD upstream and downstream.

Binary distribution with RPM Package Manager

AutoSD is a binary distribution that consists of precompiled RPM packages that contain components for both the automotive Linux kernel and user spaces. This means that AutoSD is in a ready-to-run format that you can shape into an OS image and install without additional compilation. AutoSD users also have visibility into the source of the binary. For more information about binary distibutions vs source distributions, see source and binary distributions. Software installation and management in AutoSD is handled by RPM Package Manager (RPM), a package management system used to manage RPM packages. These packages are architecture-specific collections of compiled binary, configuration, and documentation files. For more information about RPM, see RPM Package Manager.

Image-based OS

AutoSD is an OSTree-based operating system, meaning that it is image-based, immutable, and supports atomic A/B updates and rollbacks which are storage- and bandwidth-friendly. For more information, see OSTree.

Extending OSTree tamperproofing with composefs

As a content-addressed object store with inherent deduplication and byte-level image diff features, OSTree is both storage and bandwidth friendly. It also offers the capability to dynamically install containerized applications, which makes it possible to manage application lifecycles independently from the underlying OS lifecycle. When combined with composefs verification and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot, AutoSD is tamperproof. For more information, see tamperproofing.

Mixed criticality

AutoSD uses containers as the foundation for Software-Defined Vehicle architecture. With containers, you can run the entire software stack on a single operating system while isolating ASIL and QM workloads from each other, and from the rest of the system. Because containers are fundamentally a process isolation mechanism, you can use this architecture to configure criticality on a process level. AutoSD comes with a preconfigured mixed-criticality architecture leveraging container technologies to constrains application behaviour across the ASIL/QM divide. For more information, see mixed criticality.

Reactive, deterministic kernel optimized for automotive

AutoSD incorporates Real-time Linux, Real-Time Scheduler, and POSIX clocks in kernel-automotive to satisfy automotive requirements for high performance, minimal size, low latency, and consistent response times. For more information, see Real Time.

Continuous FuSa certification

When AutoSD flows downstream to Red Hat In-Vehicle OS, Red Hat engineering teams perform additional safety verification and validation specific to the context of each automotive target hardware reference platform before each release. This means that Red Hat In-Vehicle OS is working on achieving certification as a safety element out of context (SEooC) up to ASIL B according to ISO 26262 2nd ed. The safety approach is a tailored, open-source interpretation of ISO 26262 that also considers the informative annex ISO/PAS 8926:2024. For more information, see Continuous certification.