Yes, Matter…matters, at least to one chipmaker and some early adopters, including device makers.
As the Matter protocol emerges to help achieve interoperability of smart home and other IoT products, Silicon Labs said its Alpha program for BG24 and MG24 SoCs supporting Matter has sold out. Both chips are now generally available.
The company has named six companies that are early adopters of the new SoCs, naming each of them in a recent blog.
The chipmaker’s efforts and the work of countless other vendors toward support of Matter seems especially timely with the recent shutdown of Insteon that left hundreds, if not thousands, of customers in the lurch.
RELATED: Insteon’s shutdown is shameful, but won’t slow down smart home growth
Nanoleaf, a smart lighting vendor for the home, said it is using Silicon Labs’ MG24 and its support of Matter to build products that can be integrated into a user’s ecosystem of products.
“We’ve always emphasized local communications like HomeKit and our Open API that don’t need cloud servers in the middle to perform basic fundamental functions,” said Nathan Dyck, chief product officer at Nanoleaf, via email.
“Matter extends this approach much more broadly, bringing local control in a standardized way and we think it is the solution needed for the smart home to be far more resilient long into the future,” Dyck said.
Dyck posted a blog in January giving a longer explanation of Nanoleaf’s philosophy. “When Matter was first announced at the end of 2019, we knew right away we needed to be at the forefront of this new protocol,” he wrote. “Matter means we can build one language to control our products and focus much more of our time innovating on problems that haven’t been solved yet. We’ve been collaborating closely with other members of the Connectivity Standards Alliance from Day 1 and will be ready to bring new products to market as soon as Matter is ready for everyone later this year.”
The two Silicon Labs SoCs apparently have a broader base of support than smart home applications. Of the other early adopters the company named, one was Leedarson, which helps manufacturers build, test and deploy IoT systems and products. It is using MG24 to give its customers the advantage of Matter interoperability from a single application across multiple projects. A case study posted by Silicon Labs notes that Leedarson is participating in a Matter spec validation event this summer.
Tuya, based in China, makes an IoT development platform and an app called Tuya Smart. The company is also using the MG24 and Matter to unify 400,000 IoT products they support used in 200 million devices. A case study is online.
Viessman, a global heating and refrigeration company, is focused on using the BG24 and MG24 SoCs for their low power requirements in battery-powered products. A more detailed case study is available.
Meanwhile, SensiML is using the AI and ML accelerator on the new chips to design intelligent apps while Edge Impulse is using the chips for an embedded ML platform that companies can use to build AI-aware products.