Zephyr Project Grows with New Collaborations to Achieve Safety Certification
Beaverton, Friday, 31 January 2025.
The Zephyr Project welcomes Doulos, Honda, and others as Silver members. This collaboration advances the project’s push for IEC 61508 safety certification, enhancing RTOS for critical applications.
Strategic Industry Partnerships
In a significant development on January 30, 2025, six prominent technology companies - Doulos, Honda, Hubble Network, IAR, inovex, and Microchip Technology - have joined the Zephyr Project as Silver members [1][2]. This expansion comes at a crucial time as the project progresses toward achieving IEC 61508 certification, having already secured written concept approval for its kernel in 2024 [1]. The certification initiative represents a major step toward establishing Zephyr as a trusted platform for safety-critical applications [2].
Technical Achievements and Infrastructure
The Zephyr Project has demonstrated remarkable technical progress, now supporting over 750 boards with various microcontroller architectures, including Arm, RISC-V, and x86 [2]. The July 2024 release of version 3.7 Long Term Support (LTS) has provided a stable foundation for embedded connected products [2]. As Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Systems at the Linux Foundation, emphasizes, ‘Our commitment to achieving full compliance underscores the Zephyr Project’s dedication to delivering a real-time operating system that adheres to the highest safety and quality standards’ [1][2].
Industry Impact and Market Position
The project’s growing influence is evident in its industry adoption, with Collin Rogowski, Head of inovex Academy, noting that ‘the Zephyr Project has become the de-facto standard operating system for small embedded devices’ [1]. Microchip’s involvement particularly strengthens the ecosystem, as Rod Drake, corporate vice president at Microchip, highlights their focus on ‘delivering secure, scalable and flexible solutions for embedded developers’ [1]. The collaboration enables developers to leverage Microchip’s extensive portfolio of Functional Safety ready microcontrollers with Zephyr RTOS [3].
Future Developments and Community Engagement
The Zephyr Project is set to showcase its latest developments at FOSDEM 2025, scheduled for February 3-4, 2025, in Brussels [4]. The event will feature multiple technical sessions, including presentations on BLE host applications, RISC-V integration, and open-source best practices [4]. This community engagement comes as the project celebrates reaching over 100,000 commits in its main repository, marking a significant milestone in open-source collaboration [5].