Silicon Labs Expands Support for Zephyr Project

Unlocking a New World of Wireless for Zephyr RTOS Users

At Silicon Labs, we’re passionate about wireless communication and enabling the IoT’s next generation of connected devices. Of course, innovative wireless solutions amount to more than just a killer Bluetooth or Wi-Fi chip—great software is a must. We’ve been writing efficient and lightweight drivers, protocol stacks, and even kernels for years, but we also leverage a considerable amount of open-source software, and we’ve recently stepped up our efforts to support one of the IoT space’s hottest open-source projects, the Zephyr Real-Time Operating System (RTOS).

Unlike many other embedded software offerings that have been given the “RTOS” moniker, Zephyr is a comprehensive software platform, incorporating all of the components that developers need for an IoT product. There is a growing contingent of software enthusiasts who contribute to Zephyr, and the project—chartered and overseen by the Linux Foundation—is governed by a list of member companies that includes many highly respected names in hardware and software. At Silicon Labs, we saw the potential of the Zephyr RTOS in its early days and have been a member company since 2021.

Expanding Zephyr Support on Silicon Labs Wireless Solutions

Support for Silicon Labs kits has existed in the Zephyr Project since well before we were a member company—a testament to the strength of the community. This year, though, we will be looking to build on the support packages that are presently available, to ensure that Zephyr is an option for product development on a wide range of our devices. Our initial focus will be to enable Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) on the most popular members of our EFR32 MCU family, and Wi-Fi on our SiWx917 devices.

Although the official launch of our broadened Zephyr support offerings will take place later this year, the underlying development work is already in progress. Because Zephyr is an open-source project and we are moving forward with an upstream-first approach to our development, there is a unique opportunity for developers outside of our own teams to follow this work and even make contributions. If you’re interested in checking out the Zephyr Project and following the activities of the Silicon Labs teams and other contributors, you can visit the official Zephyr Project GitHub repository.

For developers whose primary interest is in writing application around Zephyr, you can find the code needed to enable Bluetooth LE on the xG24 and xG27 Dev Kits in the project’s repo. You can begin experimenting on these kits now and look forward to a wider selection of drivers—and support for additional kits—in the second half of the year. We’ll also be officially rolling out our Wi-Fi support in that timeframe.

If you don’t have time to wait, we invite you to explore Silicon Labs’ portfolio of wireless solutions featuring proven software and services, industry leading energy efficiency, wireless performance, and security. Check out our SiSDK supporting our full range of products with exceptional developer experience and software support.

Call For Feedback as Silicon Labs Extends Zephyr Support

As the Silicon Labs teams ramp up our Zephyr efforts, we’re excited to see where the project goes. Because the foundation for Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi support has been around for years in Zephyr, these were a natural target for our first efforts. Our wireless expertise, however, extends far beyond these technologies and we welcome your thoughts and suggestions in our community on how we can bring new connectivity options into the Zephyr fold.