Infineon Select Zephyr™ RTOS for their Next Generation of Products and Solutions
As you may have seen in the news, Infineon has joined the Zephyr™ Project. Take a look at the press release on the Zephyr™ Project page. This blog gives some additional context as to why we have joined the Project and to set out a manifest that Infineon aim to achieve.
Why We Have Joined Zephyr™
As someone who has been in the IoT industry for many years, first starting as a ZigBee developer, then building voice products and now as a Technical Marketing Manager for the Software Ecosystem at Infineon, it's been clear over all that time that complexity doesn't get simpler, but evolves into different complexities. There isn't one magic bullet that meets everyone's objectives and the content and infrastructure provided needs to be flexible and rich. This proves to be massively challenging, to meet all different innovative use cases, but also create a foundation of compatibility.
Within ModusToolbox™ , we believe we are achieving this with our constant evolution of our graphical tools for complex Software, Multi-IDE support, a build system that can be seamlessly integrated into OEM's build system and how DevOps can scale with nightly builds and testing frameworks. However, more and more engineering teams start to favor certain ecosystems for various reasons including:
- Open Source Driven though the Apache 2.0 license
- Long Term Support
- Multi Vendor Platform Support
- Repo Management with West
- Rich Industrial and Consumer Software Standards
- Configuration Tools through Kconfig and DeviceTree
There are many other reasons why developers choose Zephyr™ and we firmly believe that ModusToolbox™ Software and Tools provides these exact features, however, we also need to be able to provide that Safety net to Developers who haven't used Infineon Microcontrollers before and do want to use Open Source Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Networking and Application Protocol stack and many more.
Lastly, our joining also allows us to drive new ideas based on our industry expertise that benefits developers utilization Infineon technology which leads us to what we hope to achieve as being a member of the Zephyr™ Project
Looking at High Performance, Not Just Constrained Devices
For a long time, many "RTOS" providers were focused on constrained devices and limited resourced devices. Now this was the case for many devices when Zephyr™ was first brought to the market, but rapidly, this has changed. Microcontrollers of today have increased in performance and have started to bridge the gap to Microprocessors exponentially. Yes, it's important to make sure Software is optimized for performance, however, not at the expensive of enriching the Software ecosystem of features and capability. Also, to refer to Zephyr™ as an "RTOS" really devalues the project itself, as Zephyr™ can also be referred to as an Ecosystem of Open Source Software that gives confidence in support and a range of middleware and application protocols to get products to market. We at Infineon aim to drive more content, Multi-Core use cases and rich Software to remove the myth of Microcontrollers being "Constraint".
Bridging the Gap from Linux Developers to Zephyr™ Developers
With the improved performance of Microcontrollers and the cost effective offering, a new breath of Embedded Developers are experiencing the Microcontroller universe. This is exciting because it brings new ideas and a new perspective on what's needed to build innovating products and technology. It also means, with more software needs there is an increased need for stability and ease of use. Comparing the Software Enablement available for Linux Developers and Software Enablement for RTOS Developers, Linux appears to have a richer experience. This means, Software content we all need to bring to Microcontrollers to keep up with the performance upgrades they are getting needs to improve. In a blog we have just released for the ModusToolbox™ Software Ecosystem, we are doing just that.
What we hope to achieve is to drive more Software middleware around video, audio and graphics, continuously abstracting and standardizing complex hardware while also having the option to customize for innovative use cases. We also look to drive better Machine Learning enablement through pre-build models, training flows and easier deployment, similar to what we have with ModusToolbox™ for Machine Learning and finally, improving the Audio and Voice experience through standardized tooling and Software encoders and decoders.
Next Steps
Our current focus is to get the first Zephyr™ enablement on the PSoC 6™ family into the Zephyr™ Project. We are actively working on this and will announce the availability of that very soon.
Danny Watson is a Senior Manager responsible for a Technical Product Marketing team who specialize in IoT, Machine Learning, Security and Developer Experience. The team is responsible for all Software content associated with Infineon's PSoC™ 4, PSoC™ 6 and PSoC™ 64 products. In collaboration with the Software and Applications Engineers within Infineon, they strive to delivery highly innovative and relevant Software that is directly used in end products to drive increased speed to market and reduced complexity.