ARM Introduces IoT Platform Security Architecture at TechCon 2017
At the chip company’s TechCon show, Arm officials say businesses and consumers must trust their connected devices if the IoT is to scale
Regarding Mbed Edge, Patel said that many IoT devices connect directly to the cloud. However, many more connect to the cloud through edge systems such as gateways, creating another level of devices that need to be secured and managed.
The Mbed Edge suite will provide the security and management capabilities to the gateways and similar systems. Mbed Cloud will be in production this month, while Mbed Edge will be available for preview in the fourth quarter.
The network edge is a key focus for many tech companies making moves in the IoT. The idea is to bring as much computing, storage, analytics and intelligence closer to the devices that are generating the massive amounts of data to reduce amount of bandwidth and power used in transmitting data between the edge and the cloud or central data centers, and to improve latency and security. Muller stressed that bringing machine learning closer to the edge will help drive improvements in those areas.
The number of connected devices making up the IoT will continue to grow in the coming years, not only in the consumer market but also in industrial and commercial environments as well in legacy systems that will have enough intelligence to at least read data being collected, according to Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights and Strategy.
The IoT is “important for Arm because they want their architecture to be at the center of all these connected devices,” Moorhead told eWEEK.
The chip market is currently dominated by Intel and Arm, though in the IoT, there also is competition from RISC-V and MIPS. Intel and Arm both are trying to establish their architectures in the IoT. Intel officials say their x86-based architecture reaches from the data center and cloud to the edge, with some presence in the end devices. Arm is working in the opposite direction, moving from its strength in end devices.
Moorhead and other analysts at the show noted other efforts by the likes of Intel to establish IoT security frameworks for the industry. There also have been efforts by consortiums to create IoT standards for interoperability, though there has been some consolidation of these projects.
Moorhead and others said they expect that the number of frameworks also will shrink as they move toward widespread industry acceptance. Too many specifications or reference architectures would only work to fragment the market and slow growth.
In a press conference after the keynotes, both Muller and Patel stressed the role of the tech partner ecosystem around PSA as key to ensuring support for the multiple protocols that will be important as the IoT market matures.
They view it as similar to how ARM operates its silicon business, where the company creates specifications and requirements in their CPU designs and then license those designs to partners such as Qualcomm and Samsung that put their own technologies on top of the design when they manufacture the chips.
In announcing PSA, ARM listed dozens of vendors in such areas as servers, software, security and the cloud that are supporting the framework, including such big names as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Baidu, Cisco Systems, Azure, Silicon Labs, Symantec, Sprint and BT.
Originally published on eWeek.
