One of the major barriers to growth the IoT has faced up until now is being able to scale. If you’re a developer, you will know there has been a lack of standards that makes scaling out your innovations costly and time-consuming. Add to that the dizzying array of potential market applications and requirements for IoT platforms, and you can see the challenge. But this is changing.
2023 will be a turning point for IoT developers as they look to build an even more diverse set of products and services. The IoT ecosystem has made strides to address these challenges, meaning developers will be more empowered to get creative and innovate quickly. Here are the three reasons why:
Standards
A key way to scale innovation is to make the job of design and development more efficient when it comes to the foundational hardware, software and security layers of the IoT stack. Arm is working with its ecosystem to ensure common foundational technologies are easily adoptable and scalable from cloud, to edge, to the endpoint, so developers can instead focus on differentiation at the application layer for every manner of IoT use case. One example which continues to see strong momentum in the market is PSA Certified, a framework designed to address critical challenges developers face when it comes to security.
Physical device simulation
Consider the breakthrough made in the past year around the speed of development. For years, the promised goal of hardware-software co-design was hampered by the fact that developers still needed development hardware to test out their software and optimize their designs. Today, cloud-based virtual hardware solutions allow developers to experiment with virtual simulations of the hardware, giving them more flexibility in choosing their hardware solution. This virtualized approach – with platforms such as Arm Virtual Hardware – has the potential to lower cost because teams don’t have to maintain complex board farms, and it speeds time to market.
Embedded systems developers are embracing this approach, which gives them access to more modern development practices such as MLOps and DevOps flows at scale. With access to models of a broad range of Arm computing systems, developers can create more innovative IoT products to address a huge and diverse market.
Partnerships
Collaboration, built around open, foundational technologies, is sparking standards-based innovation that’s driving the IoT end market. Matter is a great example of this.
The Connectivity Standards Alliance released the Matter 1.0 standard and certification program in 2022. The Matter project is built on the shared belief that smart home devices – from thermostats to light bulbs to smart TVs – should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. With Matter, the Alliance aims to create a universal standard focused on the application layer, with the goal of simplifying development for manufacturers and increasing compatibility of diverse IoT devices for consumers. Simplification will drive mass deployment in this space.
Arm and many other companies are working closely with the Alliance to support OEMs and other product developers in building these devices, including a current project with the Matter CI team to explore the integration of Arm Virtual Hardware into the development flows of the Matter CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous development) infrastructure. This will ensure product developers can instantly access a scalable virtual test environment that maps directly to the wide ecosystem of computing platforms for IoT.
Today, the IoT ecosystem realizes that close collaboration and rallying around standards will drive innovation for all. Thanks to these industry partnerships and transformative new simulation technologies, the IoT developer community is set for a strong, exciting year ahead.
