After ten years of development, Zephyr RTOS has become a mature open-source embedded ecosystem platform.

Article author and source: Electronic Engineering World

Ten years ago, a group of engineers from companies such as Intel, Wind River, NXP, and Synopsys launched Zephyr RTOS at the Embedded World conference—a minimal, open-source, portable, and secure real-time operating system (RTOS). At the time, its kernel ranged from 8KB to 512KB in size, capable of running on highly resource-constrained hardware, with design principles centered around open governance and built-in security practices. Today, Zephyr has evolved into a global, production-grade platform spanning IoT applications from simple sensors to complex industrial systems, serving diverse industries including consumer electronics, industrial control, and healthcare.

From the outset, Zephyr has emphasized openness and flexibility: it is governed by the Linux Foundation, is open-source and vendor-neutral, and encourages collaboration among vendors and the community to build an ecosystem. Compared to proprietary, closed-source RTOSes, Zephyr allows developers to freely choose hardware platforms and reuse the same codebase across multiple architectures, significantly reducing redundant work and development costs across different product lines.

As an open-source real-time operating system, Zephyr has evolved in just a decade from a small experimental project into a core platform for the embedded industry. Its success stems from multiple factors, including open and neutral community governance, a rich ecosystem, cross-architecture hardware support, and design principles focused on security and maintainability. Semiconductor companies such as NXP, Silicon Labs, and STMicroelectronics have strengthened this ecosystem by providing hardware support, open-source drivers, and development tools.

Background and Origin

The Zephyr project was first unveiled at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2016. Its predecessor was Wind River’s Rocket RTOS, a derivative of Virtuoso, which transitioned in 2016 to an open-source project hosted by the Linux Foundation and was renamed Zephyr. Companies such as Intel, NXP, and Synopsys participated as founding members at the project’s launch, aiming to build a “small and efficient” RTOS with a kernel footprint of 8KB–512KB, a portable architecture, and a strong emphasis on security and open-source governance from the outset. Through the Linux Foundation’s governance structure, Zephyr maintains vendor neutrality and open-source transparency, avoiding vendor lock-in and enabling any company or developer to participate and contribute code.

Building on this foundation, Zephyr has evolved from an initial minimal kernel with limited device support into a comprehensive platform, incorporating modern scheduling and kernel services, file systems, logging, encryption, secure boot, wireless protocol stacks, and device management frameworks. By the end of 2024, Zephyr supported over 750 development boards across eight architectures, including ARM and RISC-V, as well as hundreds of sensors. This growth has been driven by the ongoing contributions of more than a thousand global contributors, with over 100,000 commits made in 2024 alone.

Key Success Factors

Zephyr's success was inevitable, primarily due to the strong support from its ecosystem partners.

Open and Neutral Governance Model: Zephyr remains vendor-neutral under the management of the Linux Foundation, with all contributors—including Intel, NXP, Silicon Labs, ST, ARM, and others—advancing the project through collaborative governance. This model eliminates vendor lock-in, enabling developers to freely choose hardware vendors without concerns about software compatibility. The early commitment from founding members such as NXP was driven by the goal of breaking down fragmentation and building a unified foundation through shared investment in networking, security, and driver development.

Ecosystem and Community Maturity: Zephyr boasts an active community and a rich ecosystem of resources. The number of global open-source contributors increases annually, with over 1,100 contributors in 2024, more than half of whom were first-time contributors. Community activities are vibrant, featuring multiple technical talks, workshops, and global city meetups each year. Numerous vendors have established collaborative organizations and offered training programs, significantly lowering the learning barrier for newcomers. Zephyr’s official whitepaper survey also reveals that ecosystem maturity is the top factor developers consider when choosing an RTOS. Today, Zephyr supports over 900 development boards (covering MCUs and SoCs), 275 types of sensors, and hundreds of middleware and protocol modules, forming a comprehensive platform that delivers “out-of-the-box” solutions for device developers.

Hardware Portability and Multi-Architecture Support: Zephyr was designed from the outset to support multiple processor architectures (ARM, RISC-V, ARC, Tensilica, x86, etc.). This multi-architecture support enables code reuse across chip families, significantly reducing development costs when switching hardware. A market survey found that 49% of Zephyr users rank "hardware portability" as their top advantage. In practice, when chips are discontinued or projects expand, developers can quickly port the code by simply updating the device tree configuration, avoiding the high cost of starting from scratch. Additionally, Zephyr’s modular design and modern toolchains such as the West build system further enhance code reuse and efficiency in cross-platform development.

Security and Compliance Design: Security has always been at the core of Zephyr. A security committee was established early in the project’s lifecycle, implementing secure coding standards and vulnerability response procedures. Since becoming a CVE Numbering Authority in 2017, earning the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative Gold Badge in 2018, and consistently using automated SBOM tools, Zephyr has continuously improved its security transparency and response speed. Today, Zephyr maintains a dedicated Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) that collaborates with the community to rapidly remediate vulnerabilities, meeting stringent industry requirements. In 2024, the project received formal recognition for its IEC 61508 functional safety concept and is advancing toward certifications including quality management processes, signaling Zephyr’s expansion into safety-critical environments such as industrial and automotive systems.

Comprehensive middleware and connectivity capabilities: Zephyr integrates extensive network and peripheral support, including protocol stacks such as IPv4/IPv6, CoAP, MQTT, Bluetooth LE, 802.15.4/Zigbee, Thread, and Wi-Fi, as well as various file systems and device firmware update (DFU) mechanisms. These pre-integrated features significantly reduce the effort required for users to port protocol stacks, greatly shortening product development cycles. Additionally, ongoing contributions from vendors and the community—including sensor drivers, communication drivers, and AI support libraries (such as synthetic data generation and TinyML toolchains)—enable Zephyr to deliver strong application potential in edge computing, IoT, and AIoT scenarios.

Long-term support and maintenance: Zephyr’s version management emphasizes LTS (Long-Term Support) releases. Version 3.7, released in 2024, is designated as an LTS release, guaranteeing 2.5 years of security and stability maintenance. This strategy provides product developers with a reliable foundation, ensuring that security updates do not disrupt system operations. The community’s technical roadmap also prioritizes long-term maintainability, including the gradual adoption of static analysis, MISRA guidelines, and comprehensive CI testing processes—all aimed at reducing maintenance costs over time.

In summary, open collaboration and contributions from multiple parties have made the Zephyr platform increasingly mature: today, it is not just an RTOS kernel, but a comprehensive ecosystem. Zephyr’s success stories span diverse fields—from wearables and smart homes to industrial automation—demonstrating its maturity and scalability. However, under the open-source model, Zephyr still faces challenges such as a steep learning curve, high long-term maintenance costs, and expensive certification requirements, necessitating ongoing improvements to its toolchain and training support.

Strong support from chip manufacturers

Zephyr's success is made possible by strong support from underlying chip manufacturers, with leading global MCU vendors actively supporting Zephyr.

NXP

As one of the founding platinum members of Zephyr, NXP has been actively involved since the project’s inception. NXP values Zephyr’s open-source neutrality and cross-product scalability, providing Zephyr support across multiple MCU/MPU platforms. NXP has contributed numerous drivers and examples for its chip families, including Kinetis, LPC, i.MX, and Edge Processors. To foster ecosystem growth, NXP has released customized getting-started guides and templates to enable rapid Zephyr development on its mainstream evaluation boards, such as the FRDM development board series. NXP’s MCUXpresso IDE also includes Zephyr sample projects. In recent years, NXP has organized training workshops for universities and enterprises and has distributed tens of thousands of FRDM boards to encourage developers to try Zephyr. According to its official blog, NXP aims to reduce fragmentation through Zephyr by building security and connectivity capabilities on a unified foundation, enabling multiple companies to collaboratively create a stronger ecosystem.

Silicon Labs

Silicon Labs joined the Zephyr community in 2021 and was upgraded to a Platinum Member in 2025. As a leader in wireless connectivity, Silicon Labs introduced support for its portfolio of wireless chips—including EFR32 Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/Thread chips—to Zephyr. The company has contributed drivers and network protocol stacks upstream to Zephyr and maintains wireless protocols such as Wi-SUN, Zigbee, and Bluetooth. In early 2026, Silicon Labs launched the Simplicity SDK based on Zephyr, providing developers with vendor-validated wireless stacks and drivers backed by long-term lifecycle support. Silicon Labs emphasizes alignment between upstream Zephyr and its downstream SDK to balance open-source innovation with enterprise-grade reliability. Additionally, Silicon Labs is highly active in community initiatives: its technical lead serves as Chair of the Zephyr Council (2026) and co-hosts technical交流 sessions with other members. Silicon Labs also publishes adaptation examples via GitHub (zephyr-silabs repository), fostering developer ecosystem growth. Their efforts have enriched Zephyr’s applications in IoT wireless connectivity and provided a stable foundation for projects such as Zigbee-based smart homes.

STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics became a Silver Member of the Zephyr community in 2024. ST’s contributions focus on STM32 series MCUs and related peripheral drivers. ST engineers have long contributed code to the Zephyr project, including support for hardware such as USB controllers, LCD-TFT displays, network interfaces, and low-power modes. They have also invested significant effort in reviewing external contributions to ensure that third-party improvements for the STM32 platform are promptly validated and integrated. The latest Zephyr 4.4.0 release adds support for MCU series including STM32C5, STM32H5, STM32U3, and STM32WBA2X. In practical applications, ST integrates Zephyr with its STM32Cube ecosystem, providing extensive examples, documentation, and hardware platforms. ST recommends developers get started quickly via the Zephyr documentation page and the Discord community (e.g., the #STM32 channel). At the community level, ST actively promotes Zephyr through partner projects, training programs, and open-source forums, demonstrating its capabilities with sample projects such as touchscreens and sensor drivers. ST’s ongoing involvement further reinforces industry confidence in Zephyr’s reliability for professional applications such as industrial control and IoT.

ADI

ADI's CodeFusion Studio 2.0, released in 2025, now supports complete AI workflows, enabling developers to bring their own models and efficiently deploy them on ADI's processors and microcontrollers, ranging from low-power edge devices to high-performance DSPs (digital signal processors). The latest platform is built on Microsoft's Visual Studio Code and includes built-in model compatibility checkers, performance analysis tools, and optimization features to ensure robust and reliable deployment while accelerating time-to-market.

The new modular framework based on Zephyr enables runtime performance profiling of AI/ML workloads for layer-by-layer analysis and seamless integration with ADI heterogeneous platforms. By packaging the toolchain into a unified solution, it simplifies machine learning deployment and enhances system-level performance insights.

Texas Instruments

TI is also a Silver member of Zephyr and has long contributed upstream code to the project. According to TI’s official website, since Zephyr’s inception in 2016, the TI team has actively participated in project development and leveraged Zephyr’s Twister and Ztest frameworks to ensure product quality. TI also maintains downstream repositories for Zephyr targeting wireless, MCU, and real-time control, enabling developers to access the latest features early. Additionally, TI has invested in developing specialized VS Code extensions, debugging tools, and more to enhance Zephyr’s support on its chips.

Renesas

In June 2025, Renesas announced its membership level upgrade to Platinum. Aish Dubey, a Renesas executive, stated that the company is committed to making “OSS-based RTOS solutions widely adopted across industries” and will work closely with the Zephyr leadership to accelerate the meeting of increasingly stringent functional safety and cybersecurity requirements. Previously, Renesas had already received Zephyr support for multiple microcontrollers (such as the RX and RA series); this new upgrade signals its continued investment to expand Zephyr’s influence in IoT and high-performance domains.

Nordic Semiconductor

Zephyr is a core component of the Nordic nRF Connect SDK. In September 2025, Nordic introduced the integration of its next-generation Wi-Fi SoC (nRF70 series) with Zephyr, enabling low-power Wi-Fi 6 functionality through the Zephyr RTOS and providing cloud-ready capabilities for third-party MCUs.

Zephyr's Challenge

Challenges and Risks: Although the Zephyr ecosystem is growing stronger, challenges remain.

First, the learning curve is steep. Zephyr’s modern development workflows—such as Devicetree, CMake, West, and Kconfig—are unfamiliar to engineers coming from traditional RTOS or bare-metal backgrounds, with 20% of survey respondents reporting limited progress in training and onboarding. This results in additional training investment when scaling the team.

Secondly, long-term maintenance and certification costs cannot be overlooked. Although Zephyr is progressing toward certifications such as IEC 61508, fully meeting industrial and automotive-grade compliance requirements still demands significant human resources.

Third, risks related to competition and ecosystem governance must also be watched: Other RTOSes, such as FreeRTOS, have experienced instability due to shifts by major players like Amazon and Microsoft, indicating that vertical models may lead to instability. However, precisely because of its community-driven model, Zephyr has gradually become the industry’s de facto standard.

Finally, regulations such as the EU Cybersecurity Act (CRA) impose higher requirements for IoT security, demanding that Zephyr improve its vulnerability disclosure practices and strengthen the security of its dependent components.

Overall, Zephyr’s decade-long journey has demonstrated the power of open-source collaboration: multi-party participation has transformed a lightweight RTOS into a global platform shaped by the efforts of thousands of engineers. Driven jointly by numerous chip manufacturers and software development companies, Zephyr continues to expand its footprint in the IoT and edge computing domains. However, no technological path is without challenges. As device complexity grows and regulatory requirements increase, the Zephyr community and ecosystem partners must continuously innovate and improve.

Regardless, this decade, Zephyr got its ecosystem right—and succeeded.