Mentor Graphics has announced what it says is the embedded industry’s first end-to-end IoT solution that features customizable gateway hardware and software, cloud services, and edge devices.
The customizable IoT gateway System Design Kit (SysDKTM) solution is designed to combine hardware and software to reduce risk and shorten time-to-market. The new Edge-to-Cloud security is set to support secure convergence in the gateway, thanks to its pairing with ARM TrustZone technology.
The Mentor IoT solution, as it is known, is a made up of the customizable SysDK, a cloud backend, and runtime solutions on which to build a wide array of IoT edge devices. Thanks to its support for everything from 8-bit microcontrollers to the latest 64-bit microprocessors, it can handle almost any M2M deployment, up to an including those requiring more than 100,000 gateways, each supporting dozens of edge devices, Mentor says.
“By announcing this solution, Mentor Graphics has demonstrated their leadership in the next generation of advanced and customized IoT and cloud solutions,” said Ian Ferguson, VP, worldwide marketing and strategic alliances, ARM. “Mentor's support in the gateway of ARM TrustZone-based hardware partitioning will help customers address critical security requirements as the number of IoT connected devices continues to grow.”
The Gateway SysDK reference hardware uses an ARM Cortex-A9 based i.MX 6 series applications processor from Freescale Semiconductor and the base reference software includes a Linux BSP. Security for the system comes through gateway partitions using ARM TrustZone. Amazingly, Mentor says that a new system can go from concept to production in as little as eight weeks.
The Mentor cloud solution enables companies to remotely provision, monitor, collect data for analysis, and manage gateway and device deployment securely through a web interface or a mobile application. The cloud backend can integrate multiple cloud service providers, and enables management of server life-cycles using automation templates including easy-to-use and customizable dashboards.
Mentor Graphics also enables the development of IoT edge devices that span application segments. The Mentor Embedded Nucleus real-time operating system is already working more than 3 billion devices, the company said, and when paired with this new suite, the company is set to create solutions made unique to any customer’s needs.
“Our collaboration with the Mentor team has resulted in a dynamic end-to-end solution that is used to provide consumer-facing services in public places,” said Brent Richtsmeier, VP, advanced printing solutions lab, Samsung Research America. “Together with Mentor, we developed a cloud-managed gateway that aggregates a cluster of Samsung devices including printers and displays. From the Mentor cloud an array of location-aware services are provided to consumers via mobile applications on the device clusters.”