Interop, Security Key to Broader IoT Deployment, Silicon Labs Conference Told
IoT's potential won’t be realized without universal interoperability, seamless operation, an easy development process and strong security, said Silicon Labs General Manager-IoT Matt Johnson, keynoting the second day of the company’s first “Works With” developer conference, held Wednesday and Thursday. “If we don’t get the trust and security right, this is not going to happen.” “We saw this need in the industry,” Johnson told us, detailing the company’s reasons for holding the virtual conference that drew 5,500 attendees. The chipmaker sees its role as pivotal to the advancement of the IoT.
Silicon Labs supports “tens of thousands” of customers across thousands of apps, it has shipped 4 billion products and supports over 100 wireless protocols: “We’re right in the middle of this,” Johnson said. “It would be hypocritical and counterintuitive to not encourage attendees from other companies, especially when you’re saying, ‘Let’s get everything to work with everything.”
The IoT is “at the beginnings,” said Jamie Siminoff, CEO of Amazon's Ring. Though the IoT numbers billions of devices, Siminoff envisions hundreds of billions, but “we’re still looking in a very linear way how to integrate things.” Privacy is fundamental to the next stage because IoT's about “trust,” said Siminoff: “We’re putting products into people’s homes, their lives, their cars, their daily systems.”
Today, “we either connect to the home or a hub,” said Siminoff, describing a physical product with security credentials, Wi-Fi, or a cellular network. IoT products can’t roam and are “stuck in the home,” he said. Though cellular has roaming, it’s a metered cost requiring billing, it’s power hungry because of distance to towers, and chips are fairly expensive. Amazon's Sidewalk takes the best of protocols such as Zigbee and Z-Wave -- and cellular -- and “smooshes them together,” giving connectivity to IoT devices in a “cellular-like way" running off "the cost basis of the home.”
Amazon’s first foray into Sidewalk is Ring Fetch, designed to connect to a pet’s collar. The device will allow pet owners to track their dog within a geofence and get alerts when the pet leaves the yard. Fetch is a reference design for Sidewalk, showing the flexibility of the standard, said Siminoff. “Roaming is important for a dog getting out of the house,” he said: “It’s about meshing connectivity.” When a Sidewalk device powers up, it immediately connects, he said.
Siminoff said Amazon isn’t trying to compete with protocols. Silicon Labs' Johnson said if Sidewalk is successful, “people don’t have to think about connectivity: Connectivity is just going to happen.” To succeed, Sidewalk needs to interoperate with other protocols, he said.
Siminoff likened Sidewalk to a utility: “We don’t talk about how we’re going to get electric to our product when it gets to a house,” said Siminoff, because it's a given an electrical outlet will be there. Ubiquitous IoT connectivity could remove that element from the product design process. His dream: “That someone is listening and saying, ‘Wow, that unlocked a new idea of something I can do that benefits society.'”
IoT Conference Notebook
Silicon Labs used the conference to introduce developers to the BGM220S system-in-package (SiP) module in its Bluetooth portfolio, launched at CES. The Bluetooth 5.2 modules -- optimized for power efficiency, cost, size and turnkey simplicity -- are designed for device makers needing “the smallest form factor, pre-certified Bluetooth Low Energy with little to no RF design or engineering required.” PC board modules offer many SiP module benefits at a lower cost, it said. The company’s silicon and module technologies support multi-protocol connectivity for gateways, hubs and smart lighting, it said.
The Simplicity Studio 5 software suite simplifies development of wireless SoCs, modules and microcontrollers, said the company. It gives device developers access, security configuration and code portability across IoT SoCs and modules, “significantly reducing development time.” The suite delivers to IoT developers performance, power, size, multi-protocol coexistence, and security, said IoT GM Johnson. The free development platform is said to help developers create multi-protocol products with OpenThread and Bluetooth Dynamic Multiprotocol technologies “without having to know every implementation detail."
Wi-Fi 6 is becoming a “major influence” in IoT that Silicon Labs is supporting along with other technologies, said Johnson. Tuya announced at the event it’s using Silicon Lab’s Wi-Fi 6, starting with a door lock reference design, he said. The next-generation Wi-Fi technology was the impetus behind the company’s purchase of Redpine Signals’ connectivity business this year (see 2003120012). Johnson touted power consumption and “always-on” Wi-Fi as differentiators made possible by Silicon Image-Redpine collaboration. “Think about the ability to have always-on Wi-Fi that operates two to three years on a battery,” he said: “It’s something that couldn’t be done before." Wi-Fi 6 brings to the IoT the ability to support "hundreds of nodes without affecting network performance,” Johnson told us. “It allows prioritization and management across all the devices with their unique and different needs, and it supports doing this with lower power, which is something Wi-Fi has not been traditionally good at.”