Apple taps BlackBerry for self-driving vehicle expertise

Apple's car development team to focus on self-driving technology first rather than designing own vehicle

Apple has quietly hired Dan Dodge, the founder and former CEO of QNX, the real-time operating systems developer bought by BlackBerry in 2010.

Dodge retired from BlackBerry in September 2015, but according to Bloomberg was secretly hired earlier this year to help it get its Apple Cars project back on track. Bloomberg claims that Dodge was discreetly hired by Apple earlier this year in a bid to nail down the software side of its not-particularly-secret vehicle developments.

According to Bloomberg, Apple aims to complete a car design by 2020, but is focusing on developing its own autonomous driving system first, before rolling out its own physical vehicle. Bloomberg cites sources who claim that the project has been mired in confusion regarding its direction, as well as technical delays, partly caused by multiple departures of key personnel.

Apple is hoping that Dodge's life-long expertise in an operating system - QNX - that is widely used in the automotive sector will help provide some of the authority and direction it needs for its own automotive project.

QNX is a Unix-like, microkernel-based operating system. Unlike conventional operating system kernels, which are essentially monolithic programs composed of a large number of parts, the QNX kernel is largely run as a number of small tasks or ‘servers', which can be individually switched on or off. This improves performance and efficiency.

QNX runs on a number of microprocessor architectures, including MIPS, PowerPC, Hitachi SH-4 and ARM.

Dodge co-created QNX while a student at the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1980, with a first version released in 1982.

QNX formed the foundation of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone operating system after its acquisition by BlackBerry. While BlackBerry 10 failed to catch on, QNX has continued to prosper as a real-time operating system in the embedded market, and in the automotive sector in particular.