[yocto-ab] Introducing IoT Reference OS Kit

[Cobbley, David A]

As Yocto Project focuses over time to better support new and distinct verticals (to attract a greater membership), we wanted to help that effort by offering a reference distribution that enables key components and technologies relevant for IoT. The IoT Reference OS Kit is a new set of Yocto Project metadata layers and infrastructure geared towards IoT usages. The reference kit will introduce the concept of a "profile" - an image configuration that integrates a subset of the new content allowing the content to work seamlessly together. Examples of planned profiles are industrial, gateway and machine vision, but others could be included. Each profile implements certain validated key use cases.  The reference kit would follow the Yocto Project release cadence, publish the content in the Yocto Project git and use the Yocto Project Bugzilla for feature and bug tracking.

Initially, the code which will be contributed by Intel will support selected Intel development platforms through the meta-intel BSP layer, but other contributors are welcome to port and test the reference kit on additional architectures, or perhaps create distributions specific to other verticals. Intel will maintain the IoT Reference OS Kit content relevant to Intel Architecture, and Yocto Project will benefit from the project through expansion of the amount of well-maintained content. The reference kit will provide an additional validation mechanism for the large part of OE-Core as well as extending the testing to metadata in other layers and we would naturally contribute relevant improvements and bug fixes we come across with during our development cycle also to core Yocto and OE-Core and those other layers as appropriate.

Some planned high level features for the reference kit are:
-OTA SW update mechanism
-3rd party application support
-Comprehensive sensor support (mraa/upm/IoTivity)
-BT Audio
-Industrial robotics support
-Machine Vision support including Realsense enabling
-Security enhancements like TPM,IMA/EVM and Secure Boot reference implementation

We are excited to contribute these new IOT-friendly features to the Yocto Project, and will be releasing the initial implementation into the project soon.

--David Cobbley
Intel SSG/Open Source Technology Center


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