In May 2020, I wrote a couple of blogs about what we were starting to hear about in terms of use cases for our separation kernel hypervisor, LynxSecure, in Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications. I thought it about time to provide a short update. As I mentioned previously, Lynx has a long history focused on accelerating and cost reducing the path that customers create, certify and deploy mission critical avionics’ systems. We have a set of artifacts in place that customers can reuse to simplify system certification processes etc. According to research by Rockwell Collins, DO-178C DAL A requirements represent a superset of industry specific certifications such as ISO 26262, IEC 61508 and similar certifications. As a result, we felt that Lynx could apply its extensive avionics experience and certifications into additional markets.

Back in March, I wrote a blog about secure laptops based on some work Lynx was doing in this area. I committed to providing some ongoing updates via our website in due course. At the time, this was based some work with a partner that is focused on the Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program. I hope to be able to share more details in the public domain about this partnership in the not-too-distant future.

Earlier this week, Lynx announced a set of products for a number of target applications. Each of these feature a combination of Lynx technology, guest operating systems from third parties and system integrations. Much of the early coverage has discussed our expansion into certain green- and brown-field industrial applications, and we are certainly excited about the opportunities there.

Since my last blog on Edge Computing, I have been contemplating Lynx’s positioning with regard to safety or security. Are we providing security or safety? The short answer is that we provide both. But the slightly longer answer is more interesting.

The technology industry loves its buzzwords and acronyms. Every couple of years it seems there is something new that will cause a paradigm shift, that the world will be “turned upside down,” etc. Bill Gates once said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” One of the newer terms to appear is “Edge Computing.” Predictably, there are people forecasting seismic changes in the world order. To quote Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters: “Human sacrifice, dogs, and cats living together—mass hysteria.” The reality is less dramatic than a paradigm shift; namely that systems oscillate back and forth from centralized processing to distributed models. A year ago, Gartner placed Edge near the peak of the hype cycle. Really, all Edge Computing relates to is an understandable shift of the intelligence back nearer to where data is created.

The world has changed drastically since my last blog at the end of February. We had just returned from Embedded World, but of course today it’s all about webinars, video and additional technical content in lieu of physical tradeshows. I had planned to write about the world of Lynx marketing in the current (and hopefully soon-to-be post) COVID-19 era… Then Arun, my colleague that runs the engineering team, posted his blog about life in this new normal, so I felt I had to pivot to another theme...