At the 2020 Summit Olivier Phillipe, Vice President of Entertainment Technology at Liberty Global- part of the RDK community- delved into the innovation on Application management across RDK-V.
He highlighted deployments of Downloadable Application Container (DAC) Solutions to allow dual Apps to be downloaded and run on RDK supported STBs without additional modification.
A storyline of these innovations explored…
Past limitations of application integration
Across the video platform, complied code sharing flexibility and capacity has been limited due to multiple dependencies.
The range of open-source libraries and RDK stacks vary for each Multiple System Operator (MSO) due to differing platform delivery cycles and product requirements.
The complexity of hardware components for RDK devices has evolved over time leading to a change in hardware targets and subsequently, a change in software packages (including Linux dependencies). A standardised ground is needed for seamless integration.
Native Application development has also come along way overtime. Different versioning has driven changing dependencies.
This largely been caused in relation to development complexity involving different platform delivery cycles and product requirements.
Native App versioning is also driving different dependencies across time.
DAC deployment revolutions
Deployment of DAC containers within RDK-V is essential to reduce complexities in the development of Applications integrated across diverging RDK-V supported devices at full scale.
Key benefits include:
- Close source binary App delivery run on any RDK supported device
- SDK running on standard reference hardware (Raspberry Pi or PC)
- Scalable and dependable performance across all platforms
- Overcome device storage limitations
- Container isolation means Applications are secure and stable
RDK and OCI
The Linux Foundation’s open governance structure – Open Container Initiative (OCI)- inspires industry standards and specifications to be standardised.
For this, Application image, format, and runtime have a common ground that enables seamless Application deployment.
The image specification for Container Image formats in DAC includes file system bundles, image manifest, and configuration.
The runtime specification used within RDK-V DAC is Crun, supported by Dobby. An open-sourced specification optimised for performance and low memory footprint.
What’s next?
The innovation in DAC progression stated by Olivier Phillipe on behalf of the RDK community will see 2020 – Q1 2021 targets:
- RDK Video Accelerator hardware integration
- AppStore Submission micro-service & flow
- Start Working with a couple of App providers
- Future support for RDK-B
As we enter the end of the year on to Q1, it is exciting to see how these 2020 Summit DAC announcements will play out as RDK community evolution expands onto RDK-4 and Lightning.
As always, to discuss or discover more about the RDK-4 platform and community innovations please contact me at Jamie.walker@paratuspeople.com
