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Teardown: The BMW / Harman IDC23H Infotainment Unit (B423)

19 points by JojoFatsani 4 days ago | 21 comments

I haven't driven this particular car, but if it's anything like any other infotainment system I've seen, I'm really hoping they're able get a profiler running on there to determine the technique they use to get massive frame drops on hardware they fully control.

GoToRO 3 days ago

It went like this:

We need a team of very good sw developers.

Maybe we can have 20% of the team be cheap "developers", people that have no inclination towards sw development to do the boring stuff.

Maybe 20% of real developers is enough in a team. The rest will learn from them.

Let's have 100% cheap developers, the project only needs changes.

We can get even cheaper developers, come to us with no prior experience and in 3 months we will teach you what you need to know.

Our projects are delayed due to covid.

Oh no, the Chinese!

Phelinofist 2 hours ago

TBH a lot of devs working on this are probably really good devs, but having experience in the German car OEM market I can quite confidently say that usually it's management pushing unreasonable deadlines/stupid features/setting priorities wrong. Kinda like in most companies that treat SW as second class citizen. Lots of catch up to do.

netsharc 3 hours ago

A friend had a nice job of driving BMWs for a manufacturer of such a system (it was early 2000s and the system was more embedded than Android/Linux). One test was setting a calendar alarm (because yeah of course the BMW needs an on-board calendar), and while cruising down the highway, wait for the alarm to go off, and then open a door. He said a colleague did this and the system crashed and went dark...

I suppose even driving 20kmh should trigger the "door open!" alarm.

t0mas88 3 hours ago

BMW has a talent in that space. Over engineered modules with terrible software. I recently drove a Toyota rental and they seem to have hired some former BMW software people as well.

I don't need 120hz Apple-like design, but it's crazy how they can't even keep a basic 30fps UI running smooth. And they still try to throw in more and more bad running animations.

artisinal 3 hours ago

Those UIs are made by embedded software engineers that have been in the automotive sector for 40 years. They have no clue how to make a modern functioning UI. The company then hires a UX expert that draws out a full plan. The software engineers implement it, it looks identical to the UX specification… but occasionally drops to 10FPS.

Probably because an important message passed by on the CAN-bus and that got a bit more priority from the CPU than the GUI

jen20 2 hours ago

CPUs do not talk to displays via CAN.

jen20 2 hours ago

Do you have a specific example of a function that exhibits this?

Both my BMWs (one each of the last two generations of iDrive) do not in any noticeable capacity, nor did my 2009 one with what was then known as "professional" navigation.

KerrAvon 3 hours ago

It's actually a little harder than people outside the UI framework space might think (there's really not a lot of time per frame; it's easy to put too much work where it doesn't belong; it's easy to regress if you're not monitoring for it after code changes).

It's core to usability at this point, though. They should make the effort.

Zigurd 3 hours ago

Everyone who can afford a car with an infotainment system also has a high-end smart phone that they replace several times over the life of the car. It's not quite as bad an idea as putting a tablet in your refrigerator door, but the product lifespan mismatch is of the same nature.

To handle the case where the customer would prefer not to think about interfacing their phone or tablet to their car, a branded compatible tablet should be a dealer option, or at least the tablet-like part of infotainment should be replaceable.

netsharc 3 hours ago

In the US, reversing cameras have been mandatory since 2018, and in the EU since 2024, so any new car sold there will need a display for the camera output.

I wonder if the law specified a minimum display size and resolution, otherwise a car company could sell a car with an Apple-watch-sized display to save costs. I imagine selling a car where the display depends on the user's phone and complying with these laws will be virtually impossible.

jen20 2 hours ago

I've seen cars that didn't have large screens put the reversing camera in the rear-view mirror - which actually is an excellent place for them.

izacus 2 hours ago

The workaround I've seen was manufacturers putting reverse cameras in rear view mirrors.

I can't find a picture right now (man, internet search sucks nowadays), but e.g. lower trims of Kia Optima had it.

pixelesque 3 hours ago

16 GB of RAM for a car infotainment system!!

(Maybe it's one of those that supports split outputs for multiple screens for all passenger positions? - i.e. kids in the back? That might be a bit more understandable.)

mrpippy 2 hours ago

It’s rendering the driver’s display (i.e. the gauge cluster), the driver HUD, the central display, watching a driver-facing camera for fatigue alerting, handling Bluetooth, WiFi, navigation. Calling it an “infotainment” system is underselling a bit

unzadunza 3 days ago

The word 'Infotainment' makes me want to barf.

bzzzt 3 days ago

It’s obsolete anyway. If the board is analysing video for safety purposes it’s a core part of the car.

mrpippy 2 hours ago

Not to mention rendering the driver’s display (gauge cluster)

jdalgetty 2 hours ago

I had no idea Garmin made stuff like this.

embedding-shape 52 minutes ago

Garmin makes so many things, from dome radars to bicycle lights, to car audio and golf gear, and everything in-between. All of the stuff I've bought with Garmin also manages to be really high quality and long-lasting. Not affiliated, guess I'm just a happy customer.

izacus 2 hours ago

While I didn't know it did for cars, Garmin is one of the most popular manufacturers of airplane avionics (which are basically plane "infotainment" screens), so I guess it makes sense.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aviation/axis/overview/