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RIM buying QNX to drive Blackberry car integration

Blackberry maker RIM is acquiring QNX, the company behind a real-time …

Blackberry maker RIM has made a deal to acquire QNX, the company behind the Neutrino real-time operating system (RTOS). The acquisition, which is expected to complete next month, will give RIM a foothold in car computing and open up opportunities for smart appliance integration.

Neutrino is an exceptionally well-engineered operating system built with a modular microkernal, a sophisticated IPC system, and a lightweight user interface layer. It offers some unusual features, such as support for network-transparent distributed processing. It is principally designed for use in embedded devices, but it can also be installed and run like a conventional desktop operating system (I actually used it as my day-to-day operating system for about six months way back in the day). Neutrino is not technically open source software, but QNX makes the source code available for non-commercial uses.

Real-time operating systems are a pretty specialized niche, but there are some places where the technology has a strong presence. The market segment where Neutrino is most relevant is automotive computing systems. QNX's software is used by a number of car manufacturers to power Bluetooth integration, device connectivity, and number of other related systems. The company is developing a more sophisticated platform in anticipation of 4G connectivity arriving in vehicles. It's intriguing stuff, but the market is going to be fiercely competitive. Intel, for example, is developing its own car computing stack based around Atom and the Linux-based MeeGo platform.

RIM's acquisition of QNX could open the door for tighter integration between Blackberry devices and car computers, a capability that could be important as cars begin to drive into the cloud. RIM has also hinted that QNX's technology could be used to power a new class of Blackberry peripherals, but the company has not offered any specific details about what kind of peripherals it has in mind.

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