Mentor announced a “Mentor Embedded IoT Framework” platform that builds on top of Mentor Embedded Linux with cloud-based IoT cloud services ranging from device authentication and provisioning to monitoring and diagnostics.

Mentor’s Mentor Embedded IoT Framework (MEIF) extends its Yocto Project based Mentor Embedded Linux (MEL) and Nucleus RTOS development platforms to provide cloud services for IoT device management. The platform mediates between these platforms and cloud service backends, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Eclipse IoT, Microsoft Azure, and Siemens MindSphere.

Mentor Embedded IoT Framework in relation other Mentor tools
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By offering a consistent set of APIs, tools, and programming methodologies, the software reduces the complexity and costs associated with device porting, scaling, and backend integration, says Mentor. It also provides security features “from device power-up to cloud.” Back-end functions can run in the cloud, on a network layer server, or on gateway edge devices.


Mentor Embedded IoT Framework architecture
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MEIF scales from MCU-based, resource-constrained end-nodes up to ARM and x86 based IoT gateways and edge/fog devices running Linux. The platform can also be ported to other OSes beyond Nucleus and Linux to other OSes. In addition to the default services listed below, customers can “integrate and enable their own diagnostics,” says Mentor.

MEIF enables backend communications and applications, including:

• Device authentication and provisioning
• Configuration and control
• Monitoring and diagnostics
• Secure software updates and maintenance
• Available memory and CPU utilization reporting
• System profiling, including time series analysis
• Support for alarms and events
• GUI based security utility to sign, encrypt, and package artifacts to be delivered to managed devices
• Trusted boot and secure data storage

The announcement follows last April’s news that MEL had been enhanced with improved IoT connectivity to Azure. That announcement came a few days after Siemens’ completion of its $4.5 billion acquisition of Wilsonville, Oregon based Mentor Graphics. Mentor, which is primarily known for its EDA design tools, is now a business unit called Mentor that is part of Siemens’s product lifecycle management (PLM) software business.

 
Further information

Mentor Embedded IoT Framework appears to be available now. More information may be found in Mentor’s MEIF announcement and product page.