On-vehicle information processing unit

摘要

An on-vehicle information processing unit includes a central processing unit; a device connected to the central processing unit; a device-dependent driver for driving only the device; an operating-system-standard (OS-standard) driver enabling an application to drive different devices; a device-dependent application for using the device through the device-dependent driver; and an OS-dependent application for using the device through the OS-standard driver. The central processing unit can include a switch for enabling the OS-dependent application only when using an Internet function, and for operating the device-dependent application in a normal mode. This makes it possible to solve a problem of a conventional on-vehicle information processing unit in that it is necessary for a general-purpose application to use a dedicated device driver for interfacing between the device and the general-purpose application, and hence it is difficult for the general-purpose application to make effective use of its functions because of man-hours required to develop the dedicated driver.