Zephyr RTOS For Embedded Systems Development
What is Zephyr?
Zephyr RTOS is a highly configurable open source real-time operating system (RTOS) hosted by the Linux Foundation. It’s tailored for IoT (Internet of Things) and resource constrained embedded devices for embedded technology sectors. Its lightweight, scalable design supports multiple hardware architecture, including Arm®, x86, and RISC-V. Zephyr is optimized for applications requiring precise timing, robust security, and scalable performance, making it suitable for a range of industries. For those who wonder what uses Zephyr RTOS, it’s found in IoT, healthcare, and industrial automation.
The main challenges of Zephyr RTOS
Resources constraints
Zephyr RTOS is dedicated for small targets such as gateways, end user interfaces, and sensors, which are build with an MCU including only a few kilobytes of memory. This resources constrained environment requires careful optimization of the RTOS and related libraries to fit the requirements of the projects.
Security
Many embedded devices running an RTOS are deployed in the field, and aren’t easily accessible to perform firmware updates. Features like secure boot, long-term support, and remote software updates,including data encryption and vulnerability tracking, are key security challenges when developing embedded devices for customers.
Scalability
The acceptability of the Zephyr solution is directly linked to a project’s scalability. Maintaining source code with good performance, responsiveness across a wide range of different embedded devices accommodating diverse hardware requirements is time consuming and very difficult.
Why is zephyr becoming the go-to framework in mcu development?
A guide to scalable, secure, and production-ready RTOS adoption
CTO & Co-Founder
Key features of Zephyr
Real-Time Capabilities
Zephyr kernel provides a rich set of kernel services (multi-threading, inter-thread synchronization, memory allocation…) and scheduling algorithms for developers. This is essential for applications requiring precise time and responsiveness, such as for industrial automation and healthcare clients.
Cross-Architecture Support
Zephyr supports various hardware architectures including some ARM Cortex cores, Intel x86, RISC-V, Tensilica Xtensa. Dozens of supported development boards and low-level device drivers are proposed to start building and evaluating Zephyr quickly.
Security focus
Zephyr integrates features such as memory protection, access controls, and secure boot, which are crucial for embedded systems. Several OTA frameworks are also available so that your devices can receive security updates and bug fixes in the field. Zephyr CVEs are tracked by the NIST Vulnerability Database.
Modular architecture
Zephyr provides a lot of flexibility to include only the necessary components in your application, and a lot of configuration options to customize each of them. This allows to optimize the RTOS footprint for each specific use cases, focusing on the constrained resources of the devices.
A comprehensive set of libraries, protocols, and device drivers simplifies MCU development. Few examples include support of Bluetooth connectivity, LoRaWAN, OpenThread, LVGL, littlefs technologies and multiple device drivers such as network interfaces, displays, touchscreen controllers, audio codecs,…
Zephyr adopted a device driver model with a device tree configuration allowing a very simple and quick integration of specific hardware interface and peripherals. Integrating a radio interface, a specific screen or any other specific stuff is usually just a few lines of configuration in the devicetree. Then you are ready to use it in your own application. This model helps to create variants of the same products with different hardware configurations by a developer.
Additionally Zephyr supports integration of external modules so that any project can write modules, independent and easily reusable, and integrate them. Existing well known libraries defined in compile time that you may know such as cJSON, secure element libraries, etc can also be integrated as Zephyr modules so that it is not required to rewrite existing source code to integrate in Zephyr. This permits to speed up the development by reusing existing lightweight well-known source code for MCU projects porting from other RTOS or development environments.
Zephyr is open source
Zephyr is an open source project which promotes collaborative effort and allows developers to access, modify, and contribute code freely. The main MCU vendors, including Nordic Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, NXP, Renesas, are official project members and contribute actively. Hundreds of independent developers also already contributed, making Zephyr the most actively developed open source RTOS. Everyone is welcome to participate.
Hundreds of independent developers also already contributed to Zephyr to propose bug fixes, new drivers, boards support, tools, release information etc. Multiple Pull Requests are submitted, reviewed and merged each week, which makes Zephyr the most actively developed open sourse RTOS, actually. Everyone is welcome to participate, why not you?Zephyr licensing model
Zephyr RTOS operates under the Apache 2.0 license, a permissive open source license that allows developers to freely use, modify, and distribute the open source software with minimal restrictions, fostering innovation and community contributions. The Apache 2.0 license also provides a robust framework for intellectual property protection, ensuring that contributions to the Zephyr project are legally sound and that users and developers can confidently integrate Zephyr into their commercial and proprietary projects without the risk of legal complications. This open yet secure licensing approach makes Zephyr an attractive choice for a wide range of applications, from hobbyist projects to enterprise-level deployments for the industry.
SUCCESS STORY
Accelerating Development of Profido A Secure Wireless Authentication Device
- Hardware Debugging and Optimization
- Comprehensive software system design and integration
- Secure OTA update architecture
- Design of a custom radio protocol
Main benefits of Zephyr for embedded systems and connected devices
Cross-platform support
Leveraging the cross-platform architecture of Zephyr to create several variants of the same product based on different MCUs from different manufacturers is an interesting solution that is already integrated in the development and manufacturing process of several companies Witekio is working with. The modular approach of the hardware configuration and the software integration of the libraries and modules helps build portable applications. This avoids difficulties during the production, particularly when manufacturing thousands or millions of devices and commercial products for the market today.
Proven RTOS Ecosystem
Zephyr is a comprehensive ecosystem. A rich set of libraries, features and protocols are provided out of the box and well-supported, maintained by the core development team of Zephyr. Compared to other well-known solutions and other RTOSES such as FreeRTOS or ThreadX, Zephyr offers an infinitely larger and richer set of components, and development tools.
Compared to other well-known solutions and other RTOSES such as FreeRTOS or ThreadX, Zephyr offers an infinitely larger and richest set of components, such as supported boards and development tools, ready to be integrated into your applications.Zephyr Community
Zephyr is continuously growing thanks to a very large active community supporting the development of the RTOS and related libraries. This is encouraged by a lot of international after-work events and conferences which some of them are organized or supported by The Zephry Project and the Linux Foundation. The active community allows developing complex solutions quickly and fix eventual bugs in the source code. Up-streaming code is encouraged, appreciated and reviewed with care by Zephyr core development team.
The active community allows developing complex solutions quickly and fix eventual bugs in the source code. Up-streaming code is encouraged, appreciated and reviewed with care by Zephyr core development team.Zephyr RTOS as a secure Choice for Embedded MCU Development
In this webinar, Witekio presents why Zephyr RTOS is one of the most secure and reliable options for embedded development on microcontrollers. Whether you’re designing connected medical devices, industrial automation systems, or IoT platforms, getting your RTOS security right is critical — and Zephyr delivers.
This session walks you through Zephyr’s key security features, including:
- Firmware integrity
- Secure communications
- Memory protection & user mode
- Trusted execution environments (TEE)
- Alignment with industry security standards
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