Toyota to delevop operating system for vehicles by 2012
Creative sound drivers due by 2018 (maybe)
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Toyota recently announced it was working on an operating system to use in various vehicles produced by the company. While operating systems have been used in cars for years, Toyota's will be unique in that it will be universally intercompatible with all models in their lineup. Through plug-ins and add-ons, the same system will be used in all Toyotas with different feature sets.
Partner Creative Labs has expressed concern about the timeline of the development for the software system. Although Creative has been a partner in development since the outset of the project, compatible drivers are posing some difficulty as no existing windows drivers can easily be ported. PR Director Vladimir Sanchez spoke to ShatteredNews about the problem.
"Everybody knows drivers take way longer to develop than an OS," Sanchez said. "We've been tweaking the same set of drivers since the original Sound Blaster. We add new graphics, but it all does the same crap. That's why the new audio stack thingy in Vista is such a problem. The last guy on staff that knew how to write drivers died in 1992."
He added, "Consumers are just going to have to accept that for the first 5 or 6 years, the audio drivers could create glitchy sound, or even crash the car."
Toyota is on record saying they will develop their own audio hardware if necessary, and that procrastination is frowned upon in their culture. "We already created the basic drivers for them," said a Toyota representative. "We're just waiting for them to brand the stupid thing, which only an idiot could cause to compromise reliability. Frankly, we're not sure they have any software engineers working for them."
Although Creative's Sound Blaster has evolved over the years, the card's designers have been forced to make them backward compatible with a driver written in 1987. This seriously cripples the card's features, and creates an engineering nightmare should the driver ever need to be changed.
"All of the hardware is specialized to work with this twenty-year old driver," chip designer Yoshimi Itsu said. "If they change the driver, the card has to be redesigned from the ground up. We're screwed."
Mr. Shachez has assured the public that Creative is doing all it can to address the issue.
"We have hired an expert to translate the driver to Windows Vista, and eventually, Toyota's cars. And by expert, I mean this one guy we know. Actually, he's the CEO's kid. He's in the IT program at the Vo-ed, so he really knows computers and stuff."
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Written By: swadmin
Date Posted: 4/3/2007
Number of Views: 4352
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