>> We're back at the Seaport in Boston.
Dave Vellante and Paul Gill.
You're watching The Cubes coverage of Red Hat Summit, 2022.
A little different this year, a smaller venue.
Maybe a thousand people.
Love the keynotes, compressed.
Big virtual audience.
So we're happy to be coming to you live, face to face.
It's been a while since we've had these,
for a lot of folks, this is their first in person event.
You know, it's kind of weird getting used to that,
but I think in the next few months,
it's going to become the new, sort of quasi abnormal.
Francis Chow is here.
He's the Vice President and GM
of In-Vehicle OS and Edge at Red Hat.
Francis, welcome.
That's the most interesting title we've had all week.
So thanks for coming here.
>> Thank you, Dave.
Thank you, Paul, for having me here.
>> So The Edge, I mean The Edge is,
we heard about the International Space Station.
We heard about ski boots, of course In-Vehicle.
What's the Edge to you?
>> Well, to me Edge actually could mean
many different things, right?
The way we look at Edge is,
there is the traditional enterprise Edge,
where this is the second tier, third tier data centers
that this extension from your core, the network
and your centralized data center, right to remote locations.
And then there are like Telco Edge, right?
where we know about the 5G network, right
Where you deploy bay stations and which
would have a different size of requirements right.
Of traditional enterprise edge networks.
And then there are Operational Edge where we see
the line of business operating on those locations, right?
Things like manufacturing for oil rigs, retail store, right?
So very wide variety of Edge that are doing
OT type of technology, and then
last but not least there is
the customer on or kind of device edge
where we now putting things into things
like cars, as you said, like ski booth,
and have that interaction with the end consumers.
>> Is this why?
I mean, there's a lot of excitement at Red.
I could tell among the Red hat people about
this GM deal here is this why that's so exciting to them?
This really encompasses sort of all of those variants
of the edge in automotive, in automobile experience.
Doesn't it?
>> I think why this is exciting to the industry
and also to us is that if you look
at traditionally how automotive has designed,
right the way the architect vehicle today
has many subsystems, they are all purpose viewed,
very tight cut, coupled with hardware and software.
And it's very difficult to reuse, right?
So their cause of development is high.
The time to develop is long and adding to that
there is a lengthy safety certification process
which also kind of make it hard.
Because every time you make a change in the system
you have to re-certify it again.
>> Right.
>> And typically it takes about six to 12 months to do so.
Every time you make a change.
So very lengthy passes, which is important
because we want to ensure occupants are safe in a vehicle.
Now what we bring to the table, which I think is
super exciting is we bring this platform approach.
Now you can use a consistent platform that is open
and you can actually now run multiple doming applications
on the same platform which means automakers
can reuse components across model years and brands.
That will lower the development cost.
Now I think one of the key things that
we bring to the table is that we introduce
a new safety certification approach
called Continuous Safety Certification.
We actually announced that in our summit last year
with the intent, "Hey, we're going to deliver this
functional certified Linux platform"
Which is the first four Linux.
And the way we do it is we work
with our partner Excedr to try to define that approach.
And at the high level the idea really
is to automate that certification process
just like how we automate software development.
Right, we are adding that monitoring capabilities
with functional safety related
artifacts in our CI three pipeline.
And we are able to aim to cut back that kind
of certification time to a fraction of what is needed today.
So what we can do, I think with this collaboration
with GM, is help them get faster time to market,
and then lower development costs.
Now, adding to that, if you think about a modern
Linux platform, you can update it over the air, right?
This is the capability that we are working with GM as well.
Now what customers can expect now, right for future vehicle
is there will be updates on apps and services,
just like your cell phone, right.
Which makes your car more capable
over time and more relevant for the long term.
>> So there's some assumptions you're making at the edge.
First of all, you described a spectrum retail store
which you know, to me, okay, it's Edge, but you
can take an X-86 box or a hyper converged
infrastructure throw it in there.
And there's some opportunities to do some stuff
in real time, but it's kind of an extension
natural extension of IT.
Whereas in vehicle you got to make some assumptions
spotty connectivity to do software download and
you can't do truck rolls at the far edge, right?
None of that is okay, and so there's
some assumptions there and as you say, your role
is to compress the time to market,
but also deliver a better consumer
>> Absolutely.
>> Experience, so what can we expect?
You started to talk about the future of
in vehicle, you know, or EVs, if you will,
what should we expect as consumers?
You, you're saying over the year software
we're seeing that with some of the EV makers, for sure.
But what's the future look like?
>> I think what consumers can expect is
Woody over a period of time, right?
A similar experience, like what you have
with your mobile mobile device, right?
If you look back 15, 20 years, right?
You buy a phone, right?
That's the feature that you have with your phone, right?
No update, it is what it is right, for the lifetime
of the product which is pretty much what you have
now, if you buy a vehicle, right.
You have those features capabilities and you
allow it for the lifetime of the vehicle.
>> Sometimes you have to drive in
for a maintenance, a service to get a software update.
>> We can talk about that too right.
But as we make the systems, update-able right
you can now expect more frequent and seamless
update of both the operating system
and the application services that sit on top of that.
Right, so I think right in the future
consumers can expect more capable vehicles
after you purchase it because new
developmental software can now be done
with an update over the air.
>> I assume this relationship with GM is not exclusive.
Are you talking with other automakers as well?
>> We are talking to auto makers, other auto makers.
What we working with GM is really a
product that could work for the industry, right?
This is actually what we both believe
in is the right thing to do right?
As we are able to standardize how
we approach the infrastructure.
I think this is a good thing for
the whole industry to help accelerate
innovation for the entire industry.
>> Well which is sort of natural next question.
Are we heading toward an open automotive platform?
Like we have an open banking platform in that industry.
Do you see the possibility that there
could be a single platform that all
or most of the auto makers will work on?
>> I wouldn't use the word single,
but I definitely would use the word open.
Right? Our goal is to build this open platform, right.
Because we believe in open source, right.
We believe in community, right.
If we make it open, we have more contributors to come in
and help to make the system better in a way faster.
And actually like you said, right.
Improve the quality, right, better.
Right, so that the chance of recall
is now lower with, with this approach.
>> You're using validated patterns
as part of this initiative.
Is that right?
And what is a validated pattern?
How is it different from a reference architecture?
Is it just kind of a new name for reference architecture?
or what value does it bring to the relation?
>> For automotive right, we don't have a
validated pattern yet but they can broadly
kind of speak about what that is.
>> Yeah.
>> And how we see that evolve over time.
So validated pattern basically is a
combination of Red Hat products,
multiple Red Hat products and partner products.
And we usually build it for specific use case.
And then we put those components together
run rigorous tests to validate it that's it going to work,
so that it becomes more repeatable
and deployable for those particular edge use cases.
Now we do work with our partners to make it happen, right.
Because in the end, right
we want to make a solution that is about 80%
of the way and allow our partners to kind of add more value
and their secret sauce on top and deploy it.
Right, and I'll give you kind of one example, right
You just have the interview with the
Veterans Affairs team, right.
One of our patents, right?
The Medical Diagnosis Pattern, right.
Actually we work with them
in the early development stage of that.
Right, what it does is to help make assessments
on pneumonia with chest X rates, right.
So it's a fully automated data pipeline.
We get the chest x-ray from an object store
use AIML to diagnose whether there's new pneumonia.
And then I'll put that in a dashboard
automated with the validated pattern.
>> So you're not using them today, but
can we expect that in the future?
It sounds like
>> Yes absolutely it's in the works, yes.
>> It would be a perfect vertical.
>> How do you believe your work with GM?
I mean, has implications across Red hat?
It seems like there are things you're going to
be doing with GM that could affect
other parts of your own product portfolio.
>> Oh, absolutely.
I think this actually is, it's a pivotal moment
for Red Hat and the automotive industry.
And I think broadly speaking for
any safety conscious industry, right.
As we create this Proof-point right
that we can build a Linux system that is optimized
for footprint performance, realtime capabilities,
and be able to certify it for safety.
Right I think all the adjacent industry, right.
You think about transportation, healthcare, right.
Industry that have tight safety requirements.
It's just opened up the aperture for us
to adjust those markets in the future.
>> So we talked about a lot about
the consumerization of IT over the last decade.
Many of us feel as though that what's going on
at the Edge, the innovations that are going on at the Edge
realtime AI inferencing, you know, streaming data
ARM, the innovations that ARM and others are
performing certainly in video until we heard today,
this notion of, you know, no touch, zero touch provisioning
that a lot of these innovations are actually
going to find their way into the enterprise.
Kind of a follow on fault of what
you were just talking about.
And there's probably some future disruptions coming.
You can almost guarantee that, I mean, 15 years or so
we get that kind of disruption.
How are you thinking about that?
>> Well, I think you company, right.
Some of the Edge innovation, right.
You're going to kind of bring back to enterprise over time.
Right but the one thing that you talk
about zero touch provisioning right.
Is critical right? You think about edge deployments.
You're going to have to deal with a very diverse set
of environments on how deployments are happen.
Right think about like tail code based stations, right.
You have somewhere between 75,000 to 100,000 base stations
in the US for each provider right.
How do you deploy it?
Right, if you let's say you push one update
or you want the provision system.
So what we bring to the table in the latest
open shift release is that, hey we make
provisioning zero touch right, meaning
you can actually do that without any menu intervention.
>> Yeah, so I think the Edge is going to raise the bar
for the enterprise, I guess is my premise there.
>> Absolutely.
>> So Francis, thanks so much for coming on The Cube.
It's great to see you and congratulations
on the collaboration.
It's a exciting area for you guys.
>> Thank you again, Dave and Paul.
>> Our pleasure, all right keep it right there.
After this quick break, we'll be back.
Paul Gill and Dave Vellante you're
watching The Cubes coverage Red Hat
Summit 2022 live from the Boston Seaport.
Be right back.