Texas Instruments (TI) is taking Zephyr RTOS beyond individual device platforms, expanding support across its wider portfolio of microcontrollers (MCUs), microprocessors (MPUs) and wireless connectivity solutions. The move gives embedded developers a more unified, production-ready development environment, while aiming to reduce development friction and address increasingly important cybersecurity and regulatory requirements, including the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).
For developers working with open-source embedded software, the expansion could reduce one of the key challenges of changing hardware platforms: migrating existing code and development workflows. By supporting Zephyr across a wider range of TI silicon, the company is enabling developers to retain their existing Zephyr-based approach while gaining access to a broader hardware portfolio and a common development environment.
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Why does it matter?
TI’s partnership with the Zephyr Project empowers developers – from hobbyists to design engineers – to create a wide range of systems on a single, streamlined platform. Backed by long-term support of the Linux Foundation, TI regularly updates its Zephyr-based software development kits (SDKs) to address security vulnerabilities, so developers can build products that stay reliable and compliant for years to come.
“With TI and Zephyr, developers get everything they need to design and scale with ease across our full MCU, MPU and wireless connectivity portfolios,” said Marian Kost, vice president and general manager of Wireless Connectivity at TI. “They can stay in the open-source workflow that they know on the TI silicon they trust, leveraging the hardware breadth, software support and supply reliability needed to take a design from prototype to production.”
“A vendor-neutral RTOS only works when companies build on it together, and Texas Instruments making its broad portfolio available on Zephyr is a strong example of that commitment,” said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation. “Developers can design across TI’s MCUs, MPUs and wireless devices on a common, upstream-first platform, backed by a community that takes security and long-term maintenance seriously.”
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More details
Embedded developers increasingly rely on the Zephyr Project not just as an RTOS, but as a thriving, neutral open-source community where real-world development expertise shapes roadmaps and drives adoption.
By actively contributing code and reference designs to the upstream Zephyr community, TI enables developers to keep their existing codebase, gain access to a broader and higher-performing hardware portfolio, and reduce long-term security risk. For developers, this means:
- No workflow disruption: Keep existing Zephyr codebases and toolchains intact when moving to TI chips.
- Upstream first code review: The Zephyr community vets TI’s code before any SDK release, giving developers a stable codebase that won’t change during product ramp-up.
- Public repository and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD): CI/CD on public GitHub pages provides early, instant access to resources and new features well before they reach the final SDK.
- Broader hardware choice: Design a full system with TI’s comprehensive embedded and analog portfolios without leaving the Zephyr RTOS environment.
- Lower long-term risk: Comprehensive resources – including validated releases, migration guides and backward-compatibility notes – reduce maintenance burdens over a product built on TI silicon supporting life cycles for over 10 years.
- Regulatory readiness: CRA compliance removes a significant barrier for developers targeting markets in the European Union (EU).
