SANTA CLARA, Calif. — ARM will extend its Mbed software suite to include a framework of modules for gateways on the Internet of Things. Mbed Edge marks a step deeper into IoT software and services for the company known for its processor cores.
The efforts serves ARM in three ways. It enhances the features of its underlying processors, sharpens its competitive edge against the rival x86 which is strong in gateways and it expands a nascent service business supplying secure keys.
The first Mbed Edge product is a protocol translation module that will be previewed before the end of the year. Other modules are expected to enable secure boot, over-the-air software updates and secure certificate authorization.
“The gateway needs to be managed and used to its full potential…for different workloads and data extraction,” said Dipesh Patel, president of ARM’s IoT services group, in a keynote at ARM Tech Con here.
The software and help integrating it into existing OEM stacks is free. However, ARM will charge for a services such as providing secure keys. It also will support hybrid software stacks.
“We see heterogenous topologies, gateways and processors — that’s the reality today and how it will be for some time, so this software can be ported to and run on variety of gateways,” said Michael Horne, vice president of marketing and sales in ARM’s IoT group.
Mbed Edge is an expansion of ARM’s Mbed OS, a real-time operating system for IoT end nodes launched in October 2014. Mbed OS deployments have been “ramping very quickly…especially in China,” said Horne, declining to give numbers.
ARM's Dipesh Patel announced Mbed Edge in a keynote. (Image: EE Times)
The expanding set of Mbed modules will be available to integrate into other OSes such as FreeRTOS. However, ARM aims to provide its own tested stack as a preferred solution.
“Many RTOSes are just kernels, but you need more than a kernel to create a complete solution,” said Patel, noting ARM will provide and maintain a suite of integrated security and comms modules. “We’ve taken all that [software support] burden away,” from the OEM, he said.
Last year, ARM extended Mbed to include modules to link end nodes to cloud services. Mbed Edge marks an expansion of both the cloud effort and a new security architecture announced on Monday.
Several analysts asked how ARM’s security architecture maps to efforts from Intel and standards groups.
“We see people making the same [security] mistakes repeatedly, so we are offering them something they can use,” said Mark Muller, ARM’s chief technologist. “Different platforms will be built in different ways, we are not heading toward one way of doing it,” he said.
Muller acknowledged higher level standards will emerge for IoT like the Common Criteria for smart cards. “We will be in compliance with those standards but [their formation] will play out over quite a few years… it’s going to be horribly fragmented for some time to come,” he added.
— Rick Merritt, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, EE Times 
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