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ARM spreads tentacles up and down the stack

Cloud-connected OS ramps up its IoT challenge another notch

The broader ambition’s of ARM’s IoT group

The mBed OS is the first full product from ARM’s new IoT group, whose overall goal is to "accelerate the pace of IoT uptake”, as its general manager, Krisztian Flautner, put it. "We are in the early phases of figuring out what the ecosystem needs and these are the first few elements we have identified,” he told the ARM TechCon event where the platform was unveiled. However, he was secretive about further elements of the unit’s roadmap. ARM describes the IoT division as “a long-term play for us that cuts across all our verticals as well as making money in its own right”.

The division has been largely built around the acquisition of Sensinode a year ago. That deal is proving a highly strategic one for ARM, and it has provided the cloud aspect of mBed OS, while the device aspect was developed in-house. Sensinode’s main focus has been on security and connectivity for microcontroller IP and it has also built protocols based on COAP (Constrained Application Protocol), which enables connected devices to talk to cloud-based servers and is included in mBed OS.

The Finnish firm has also been a contributor to the IETF, ZigBee IP, ETSI and OMA standardisation efforts. ARM has made the code for Sensinode’s NanoStack and NanoService M2M offerings available for evaluation through its mbed project, which lets engineers test products online.

That Sensinode technology is also likely to be feeding significantly into the specifications being developed by the Thread group, of which ARM is a founding member (the Finnish company has been a major contributor to the 6LoWPAN standard on which Thread is based).

Indeed, Thread may prove an important area where ARM can influence other aspects of the IoT platform, teaming up with powerful co-founders like Google/Nest and Samsung.

However, as with the OS, this entails making choices that may alienate some customers or partners, as seen in the connectivity options in mBed OS. It supports both IPv4 and IPv6 and its chosen protocols are WiFi and Bluetooth, along with 6LoWPAN and Thread. It supports 802.15.4 for both 6LoWPAN and ZigBee, but the latter seems very much sidelined in the connectivity priorities, while another Thread rival, Z-Wave, is excluded altogether. Also supported are TLS/DTLS, COAP, HTTP, MQTT and Lightweight M2M – plus Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth Smart for networking.

All across the IoT, companies will be making these choices, and striking their own balance between all-inclusiveness, and promoting their own favoured technologies. The risk is, there are so many efforts, at various layers, to harmonise the different network, software and SoC choices targeting the IoT, that the industry risks fragmentation of the standards themselves. The ARM-Intel showdown is poised for a whole new scale of confrontation.

Copyright © 2014, Wireless Watch

Wireless Watch is published by Rethink Research, a London-based IT publishing and consulting firm. This weekly newsletter delivers in-depth analysis and market research of mobile and wireless for business. Subscription details are here.

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