Qt Group Joins Zephyr Project to Accelerate IoT Development

Qt Group has officially joined the Zephyr Project, a broad industry initiative hosted by The Linux Foundation uniting developers and users in building a best-in-class small, scalable, real-time operating system (RTOS) optimized for resource-constrained devices across multiple architectures. As a long-term member of The Linux Foundation, joining the Zephyr Project is a strategic step for Qt Group to increase its focus on low-cost, mass-market appliances and IoT applications globally. As part of this partnership, Qt Group announces plans to make its industry-leading graphical user interface solution—Qt for MCUs—compatible with the Zephyr framework. This will expand the number of supported platforms for Qt Group's industry-leading GUI tools and accelerate IoT product development for its partners and customers.

The Zephyr Project

The Zephyr Project is a broad industry collaboration, including a wide range of semiconductor manufacturers, software providers, and developers in the embedded space. Currently supporting over 170 hardware devices—including low-footprint, low-cost systems,—it aims to develop and deliver an open-source versatile RTOS following a clear roadmap open to members' contributions.

"The Zephyr Project aims for seamless software interoperability across a wide range of hardware solutions. This is a  goal we share and one of the cornerstones of Qt development throughout its history," said Toni Paila, Director, Qt for MCUs at Qt Group and continues, "By opening our Qt for MCUs hardware adaptation layer, we accelerate the development of high-performance, low-cost systems, empowering our customers to deliver delightful user experiences on an even wider variety of platforms."

Extended Platform Support

By joining the Zephyr community, Qt Group expands the number of supported platforms even further and accelerates product development for its partners and customers. Already now, Qt Group provides a preview release of Qt for MCU 2.9 for the Zephyr-supported NXP i.MX RT1060 and 1064 evaluation platforms. This way, Qt users will be able to leverage this beta release from the start of the partnership by accessing it via Qt Installer. Qt for MCUs will add Zephyr support for more boards in the near future.

”We've had a very productive partnership with Qt Group over the years, and we are delighted to see the group join us as a member of the Zephyr Project. This move strengthens our collaboration even further, and we look forward to our NXP platforms being high-priority targets for integration with Qt” says Brendon Slade, Ecosystem Director at NXP® Semiconductors.

The intent is for Qt Group to contribute the source code for the Qt for MCUs hardware adaptation layer, allowing more semiconductor manufacturers to support Qt for MCUs across a wide range of chipsets. This way Qt Group, semiconductor manufacturers, and end customers can collaborate on platform support, sharing responsibilities as preferred per project.

Check Qt for MCUs

The Added Value of Qt and Zephyr

Companies building products on Zephyr will be able to deploy the high-performance Qt Quick Ultralite engine, the core of Qt Group's commercial MCU and low-end MPU offering, on the platforms of their choice. As a result, end-product manufacturers will have more flexibility in selecting hardware solutions while maintaining the same GUI assets and projects for a variety of devices across segments.

Qt Group has a long history in open-source communities, as most of our core technology is developed as an open-source project. By making its employees active contributors to the Zephyr Project in the domain of graphics and user interface technology, Qt Group also aims to strengthen the Zephyr Project.

The collaboration will be announced at embedded world North America.