Renesas Plays a Card from the Apple Deck

Is Renesas following Apple’s lead? Yes, according to Rich Nass, Brand Director at Embedded Computing Design magazine and website. In a recent blog he points out some similarities between the Renesas Synergy platform and the Apple development environment. Both, he says, are closed systems–which can have some advantages.

For years, Apple has controlled their platform. Setting standards and restricting the number and variety of developers in this way, Nass argues, paid off for users, giving them software that “always worked, and worked well.”

Renesas has just unveiled their newest product, Renesas Synergy, an embedded platform that “accelerates embedded development, inspiring innovation and enabling differentiation.”  Much of this power comes from a standardized development environment, in which Renesas supplies the OS and tools, in addition to a number of third-party applications, or Verified Software Add-ons (VSAs).

Nass compares the Renesas VSA program to Apple’s App Store.  To qualify as a VSA, the software is rigorously tested by Renesas, and once approved, it is fully supported now and in all future versions of Synergy.  “In the long run, that’s good for everyone,” says Nass, “because developers will get a good experience, but the process may take longer and may cost a little more.”

For Skkynet’s Embedded Toolkit (ETK), the verification process is already complete, and it is among the very first VSAs to be approved by Renesas for Synergy.  Available at no cost, the ETK actually opens opportunities for revenue sharing for companies using the Renesas Synergy Platform, and it provides immediate connectivity to the Industrial IoT (either in plant or using SkkyHub Web Services).  SkkyHub’s combination of speed, reliability, and security mean that embedded developers using Synergy can get full access to best of breed IoT service for their projects, just by ticking off a few boxes in their development environment.

Whether Renesas is actually following Apple’s lead or not, the idea of using standard modules of proven value to handle basic tasks, while freeing our minds to invent and build, can be found at all levels–from Lego to object-oriented programming.  Success or failure will ultimately depend on the quality of the blocks, as well as the creative spirit of the developer.