What’s New with Automotive Grade Linux?

April 4, 2024

The latest updates in Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) development include VirtIO integration and the adoption of Flutter for modern vehicle interfaces.

William G. Wong

Related To: Electronic Design

What you’ll learn:

What is Automotive Grade Linux (AGL)?
The latest developments with AGL.
What is Flutter and how does it relate to AGL?

The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) group is part of the Linux Foundation. AGL is also a Linux-based platform for software-defined vehicles (SDVs) that uses virtualization to provide a modular environment:

AGL’s virtualization platform supports multiple virtual machines in a software-defined-vehicle environment.

I talked with Dan Cauchy, Executive Director at AGL, about AGL and its latest features, from VirtIO virtualization support to the Flutter graphical user interface (GUI).

A kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) is built into the Linux kernel; this hypervisor provides the isolation in AGL. VirtIO is the open standard protocol for device support used with KVM. Additional modularity comes from Linux container support.

One of the latest additions is Flutter (see the video below). Flutter is a cross-platform, GUI, open-source standard. It’s used to provide the GUI presented in a car, including the driver display and other displays in the vehicle.

Here are a few more videos that provide insight into AGL and its components.

Introduction to Automotive Grade Linux

VirtIO - A Common Device Framework to Achieve Software Defined Vehicle

Research and Practice to Realize Linux Container that Supports Embedded Use Cases

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.