In this talk, we outline the challenges of embedded IoT development and highlight how Amazon FreeRTOS helps to solve them.

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Amazon FreeRTOS:
Challenges of Embedded IoT Development
I O T 3 1 5
Richard Barry
Principal Engineer
AWS IoT

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Agenda
Intro to IoT……………..it is here today!
The problem space…...what can we help our customers with?
The solution space…...how is Amazon FreeRTOS addressing the problem space?

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Internet of Things (IoT) - Setting the sceneNumberofdevices
Period of time

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Challenge: Logistics

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AWS IoT
Fleet onboarding,
management and
SW updates
Fleet
audit and
protection
IoT data
analytics and
intelligence
Cloud
Storage & Compute
Intelligence
Insights & Logic → Action
Secure device
connectivity
and messaging

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Challenge: Complexity
Functionality
Communications Stack
Secure Storage
Security Stack
Bootloader
Over the Air Update (OTA)

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Challenge: Compute power

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Challenge: Memory usage

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Challenge: Power consumption
Door lockDoor lockDoor lockDoor lockDoor lockDoor lock

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Challenge: Determinism
Smart Factory

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Challenge: Boot time
Car

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Challenge: Diversity of hardware and tools

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management
6. Predictable response time
7. CPU resource load
8. Boot time
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management
6. Predictable response time
7. CPU resource load
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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Provide functionality
User (application) code
MQTT I/O Port
Key
management
MQTT
Greengrass
Discovery
Secure
storage
Vendor supplied libraries
Hardware
Wi-Fi TLS library
TCP/IP
Shadow OTA

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Simplify
ISR
ISR
ISR
ISR

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Light weight multi-threading
User (application) code
Vendor supplied libraries
Hardware
FreeRTOS
kernel
MQTT agent OTA agentGreengrass discovery
Amazon FreeRTOS libraries

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity  (need to improve developer assistance)
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management
6. Predictable response time
7. CPU resource load
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity  (need to improve developer assistance)
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management
6. Predictable response time
7. CPU resource load
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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Simple event driven design
Queue
MAC ISR
Id = Rx_Data,
val = RX Buffer Addr
Software
Timer
Application
Code
Wait on queue
switch( data.id )
{
case Rx_Data:
ProcessRxData(data.val);
break;
case ARP_Timer:
ProcessARPTimer();
break;
etc.
}
TCP task
struct
xQueueItem
{
event_id_t id;
void * val;
};
Id = ARP_Timer,
val = NULL
Id = Application_Tx,
val = TX Buffer Addr

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Fixed priority preemptive scheduling

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load  (crypto calculations still take too long)
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load 
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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What we get for free

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Extreme power saving
Normal operation Interrupts
Scheduler
A Task
Idle Task
TIME
Interrupts
Scheduler
A Task
Idle Task
TIME
Tick-less operation

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load 
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

30. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load 
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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OTA over MQTT

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale  (need to provide out-of-the-box alternatives)
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load 
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale 
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load 
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools

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Software diversity
• Restrict to older C standards
• Strict separation between common
and device specific code
• Open source Git/SVN repositories

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Software diversity

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Hardware diversity
User (application) code
MQTT I/O Port
Key
management
MQTT
Amazon FreeRTOS libraries
Secure
storage
Vendor supplied libraries
Hardware
Wi-Fi TLS library
TCP/IP
FreeRTOS
kernel

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale 
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load  
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools  (simplify porting, distribution)

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale 
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load  
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools  (simplify porting, distribution)

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RAM hot spots
User (application) code
Vendor supplied libraries
Hardware
FreeRTOS
kernel
MQTT agent OTA agentGreengrass discovery
Amazon FreeRTOS libraries

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost 
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale 
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load  
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools 

41. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost 
3. Provision at scale
4. Remote update at scale 
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load  
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools 

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Provisioning at scale

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So….our challenges are
1. Complexity 
2. Bill of Materials (BoM) cost 
3. Provision at scale 
4. Remote update at scale 
5. Power management 
6. Predictable response time 
7. CPU resource load  
8. Boot time 
9. Diversity of hardware and development tools 

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AWS, cloud and edge
Gigabytes
Megabytes
Kilobytes

46. Thank you!
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