Unifying the workflow for development, production and maintenance of embedded devices: the value of the FoundriesFactory platform

Written by Foundries.io team. 

Embedded product developers juggle a myriad of tasks daily—building features, fixing bugs, and studying documentation. But the real challenge lies beyond these day-to-day activities. Developers must ensure their products are tested, validated, manufactured, delivered, deployed, and maintained over their entire lifecycle, which can span years. Every decision a developer makes impacts these stages.

The FoundriesFactory™ platform from Foundries.io, an independent subsidiary of Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc., ties together development, production, and maintenance into a unified workflow. It's a comprehensive system designed to streamline product development, deployment, and maintenance.

In this post, we address the most common questions developers have about the FoundriesFactory platform to help you understand its capabilities and benefits.

How does the FoundriesFactory fit with a typical embedded development project?

As the 17th-century English poet John Donne said, ‘No man is an island’ – this is as true of the developer as of anyone else. Decisions and features created in the early phases of a project – component selection, software development — affect later phases in a product’s lifecycle, such as production or maintenance. This means that it makes sense for ‌workflows across the entire product lifecycle to be tied together based on common resources such as Linux® kernel configuration data, manifests of software components, code repositories and so on.

The FoundriesFactory platform ties these shared resources both to a Linux distribution — the Linux microPlatform (LmP) which is made available and maintained by Foundries.io – and to a set of open-source tools and utilities. Crucially, it builds in capabilities for security-focused embedded devices to help meet regulations and standards requirements, such as the European Union’s Cybersecurity Resilience Act.

When is it appropriate to deploy the FoundriesFactory platform in a project?

Typically, embedded developers will start a project by creating a proof-of-concept based on an SoC manufacturer’s evaluation board. This provides for quick and easy generation of some basic features and functions, to prove the viability of a product idea. But this eval board is intended to provide an environment for the SoC to display its capabilities: it is not intended as a full-fledged development or deployment platform. This is why the SoC manufacturer normally offers no support for the eval board, no scope for modifying its Linux distribution‌ and minimal security updates.

As soon as the project moves beyond the proof-of-concept phase into product development, an OEM will benefit from basing their workflow on the FoundriesFactory platform. This will ensure that all components and product parameters are integrated into the workflow, and are available to downstream phases such as testing, tooling, production and maintenance.

OEMs have survived in the past without using the FoundriesFactory platform. Why do they need it now?

Today’s embedded computing device development projects are marked by two key attributes:

1. Complexity
   
   
2. Exposure to acute cybersecurity threats and stringent regulatory requirements

A platform that integrates the workflow of an embedded device project helps OEMs address both challenges.

The complexity manifests in three main areas:

1. Multiple Variants: Embedded devices are often supplied in various versions to meet different geographical or marketing needs.
   
   
2. Component Diversity: Each variant includes hundreds of hardware components and thousands of software components, with varying mixes across different variants.
   
   
3. Dynamic Software: Software components evolve over time due to security updates and market demands.

OEMs need a consistent foundation to manage and track the components and configurations of potentially hundreds of product variants. This platform ensures that each variant and production unit can be manufactured efficiently, serviced or repaired effectively, and updated to address emerging cyber threats.

Cybersecurity is critical because OEMs must respond promptly to CVE notices, as required by regulations like the EU’s Cybersecurity Resilience Act. To comply, OEMs need to update each production unit over-the-air (OTA) with the appropriate code.

The FoundriesFactory platform offers the following capabilities to manage this complexity:

• Accurate Software Bill of Materials (SBOM): For each production unit.
  
  
• Update Mechanism: For generating, delivering, and implementing update code.
  
  
• Security Framework: Ensuring updates and update authority are accessible only by authorized users.

By providing a coherent and intuitive workflow, FoundriesFactory integrates security and privacy support from the start of development.

How does the FoundriesFactory platform provide a comprehensive basis for managing the product in the field?

The FoundriesFactory framework provides a comprehensive platform to continue to support products in the field, from development through testing and tooling, to production, deployment, maintenance, and disposal.

The FoundriesFactory software achieves this by providing a unified framework within which the OEM can deploy familiar open-source tools such as Docker for container development and orchestration, and The Update Framework (TUF) for OTA updating.

All of the tools and utilities accessed through the FoundriesFactory platform, at every stage of the product lifecycle, draw on a common project database and user interface, and benefit from the automatic generation of common resources such as an SBOM for each product variant and production unit.

Alongside the open-source tools, Foundries.io also provides the LmP, a lean, continually updated Linux distribution for FoundriesFactory platform-based projects. The provision of a ready-to-use, security-focused Linux-based operating system means that developers can concentrate on application development without having to spend time and resources on the OS.

How is the FoundriesFactory platform typically implemented in a new development project?

When an OEM first takes out a FoundriesFactory subscription, Foundries.io provides comprehensive documentation that guides developers to be up and running quickly.

Many OEMs find that the best way to start is with a ‘canary group’ of early adopters, who do a deep dive into the rich library of documentation, tutorials and guides available at www. foundries.io.

Expert online support is also available from the Foundries.io Customer Success Team, who provide training and advice, answer developers’ questions‌ and handle support tickets.

As the project progresses, access will be extended outside this canary group to the broad set of developers, DevOps engineers, production engineers and others who need it. To manage access, Foundries.io encourages customers to define a set of users ‘personas’, such as embedded developer, DevOps manager‌ and test engineer. Access rights can be assigned to each persona, ensuring that one type of user cannot accidentally interfere with the work of another type.

What is the future for the FoundriesFactory platform?

Foundries.io, a Qualcomm Innovation Center company, will continue to improve the FoundriesFactory and LmP products, and to update its capabilities to reflect changes in the embedded computing operating environment, such as the introduction of new cybersecurity regulations.

The Customer Success Team plays an important role in the future of the FoundriesFactory platform, as it feeds in customer requests and enquiries into the planning of future upgrades, making the platform ever more useful and effective for embedded device OEMs.

Do you want to learn more? Join Qualcomm Developer Discord for deeper insights and connecting with the community.