#009: Zephyr’s Meteoric Rise and What It Means for the Future of Embedded

Coredump Sessions · 27 May 2025 · 59m · Episode 11

What this episode covers

Kate Stewart, VP of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation, explains how Zephyr RTOS evolved from Intel’s Wind River roots into a multi-vendor open-source project with a governance model designed to prevent corporate capture. She details Zephyr’s technical differentiators, including its Linux-inspired Kconfig and device tree, the pragmatic reuse of MCUboot, and the introduction of 5-year Long-Term Support (LTS) releases to meet regulatory demands like the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). The conversation covers Zephyr’s safety certification journey, its transparent CVE tracking, and its growing adoption by silicon vendors like Nordic and Arduino, as well as its expanding support for RISC-V and Rust.

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • Embedded.fm · 57m

    329: At Least 32-Bits, Thank You

    Kate Stewart, Senior Director of Strategic Programs at the Linux Foundation, discusses the Zephyr real-time operating system, explaining its origins from Wind River's VxWorks and its adoption of Linux-like governance and community practices. She details Zephyr's technical architecture, including its support for diverse architectures like ARM, RISC-V, and x86, its small footprint suitable for battery-powered devices, and its ongoing efforts to achieve safety certifications like ISO 61508. Stewart highlights specific use cases such as hearing aids, reindeer tracking, and smart safety shoes, while addressing the challenges of real-time performance validation and supply chain transparency.

  • The Pragmatic Embedded Podcast · 45m

    Zephyr with Luka Mustafa

    Luka Mustafa, founder and CEO of Irnas Product Development, explains how Zephyr RTOS, a Linux Foundation-backed project, enables hardware-agnostic embedded development by abstracting low-level details through device trees and a comprehensive ecosystem. He highlights the dramatic reduction in porting time—moving Bluetooth code between chip architectures in an hour versus months—and the ability to run native POSIX simulations on Linux for faster development. Mustafa also details Zephyr's testing framework, Twister, and its cultural impact, noting the steep learning curve for electrical engineers while emphasizing the long-term benefits of code reuse and reduced maintenance overhead. The discussion covers resource constraints, safety-critical certification processes, and specific scenarios where simpler solutions like Arduino are preferable to an RTOS.

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 06m

    Benjamin Cabé Nose Zephyr

    Benjamin Cabé, Developer Advocate for the Zephyr Project, explains that Zephyr is an open-source RTOS and ecosystem that provides hardware abstraction, device trees, and subsystems to simplify embedded development. He highlights how major vendors like STMicroelectronics, NXP, and Espressif integrate with Zephyr, allowing developers to swap silicon without rewriting application code, a feature that proved crucial during recent silicon shortages. Cabé also shares his personal project, an 'artificial nose' for sourdough monitoring, which he migrated from Arduino to Zephyr to leverage its multitasking, state machines, and simulation tools like Renode.

  • Embedded.fm · 56m

    93: Delicious Gumbo

    Joel Sherrill, project lead for the RTEMS real-time operating system, discusses the history, architecture, and community of the open-source RTOS he has led for 25 years. He explains how RTEMS balances the needs of hobbyists and mission-critical space applications by maintaining deterministic, predictable code while keeping a small footprint. Sherrill details the rigorous selection and management process for Google Summer of Code and ESA Summer of Code interns, highlighting the program's role in sustaining the project's development.

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 07m

    531: Sequestering the Mess

    Elecia White and Christopher White discuss winning the IEEE Educational Activities Board Meritorious Achievement Award for their podcast, Embedded.fm, and celebrate the milestone with informal education outreach. Christopher details his work integrating Rust libraries into Zephyr RTOS and struggling with Memfault's data extraction capabilities, while Elecia manages a complex robotics project. They also review books like Cory Doctorow's 'The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI' and 'Programmers at Work,' debating the ethics of taking advice from controversial figures and the societal impact of AI.

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