Senior VP of Software & Digital Platforms Group, Analog Devices
Embedded World 2024 Interview: Rob Oshana of Analog Devices
In this video interview, we chat with Rob Oshana, SVP of the Software Engineering Solutions (SES) group at Analog Devices.
About Rob Oshana
Rob Oshana, senior vice president of the software and security group at Analog Devices (ADI), discussed the company's approach to reducing software complexity in a September 2024 interview at Embedded World. He stated that ADI provides hardware abstraction layers to enable interoperability among its hundreds or thousands of analog and digital parts, as well as with other vendors' components. Oshana said ADI uses the open-source Zephyr environment as that abstraction layer, citing its permissive licensing and support for multiple vendors as benefits. He also noted that ADI integrates into Linux and uses a common device model for its low-level drivers to promote reuse and scalability. Oshana described ADI's strategy of "single die, multimarket," which he said involves creating fewer devices and using software to address different markets. He said the company is "shifting left" its software enablement to influence hardware design earlier in the process, resulting in more software being available with first silicon. Oshana added that ADI is increasingly engaging with open-source communities such as Zephyr and Linux to drive support for its products in a more interoperable manner.
Transcript (20 segments)
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Nit Dard0:00
This is Nit Dard with E Times, and I'm here at the Analog Devices booth at Embedded World in Nuremberg with Rob Oshana, who's just recently joined Analog Devices. Rob, what's your role here?
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Rob Oshana0:11
Hello, hi. So I'm a senior vice president of the Software and Security Group at ADI. So we're in charge of all the software development, enablement, deployment, and support for analog and digital at ADI.
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Nit Dard0:25
Okay, good. So it's an interesting role, and you did a talk here at the conference. Tell us a little bit about that, and then we can delve into some of those aspects.
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Rob Oshana0:35
Sure. So my talk was on reducing complexity in technology, mainly around software. And the way we accomplish that is by providing the right hardware abstraction layers. So at ADI, we have many hundreds, thousands of analog parts, digital parts. We want all of them to interoperate together. We also would like some of our Analog Devices to work with other vendors as necessary to create the right types of systems for our customers. So the way to do that is to provide a common hardware abstraction layer.
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Nit Dard1:07
Okay.
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Rob Oshana1:07
We're using one in the open community because we're very into open-source technology. So we're using the Zephyr environment, the Zephyr community, as that abstraction layer. We like it because first of all, it's open. Secondly, because it supports many different types of vendors in the community today, and it provides different levels of hardware abstraction layer, from higher-level transactional to stateless to even register level. So it gives options to our customers how they want to drive their abstraction layer for their specific solution. So these are some of the benefits that we're going with an open-source solution to help us drive our interoperability strategy.
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Nit Dard1:47
And what does that open source entail? I mean, how does a customer engage?
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Rob Oshana1:52
So first of all, Zephyr is run by the Linux Foundation. It's open in the sense that if you're a member, you can contribute and participate and set the strategy, but really anybody can leverage the technology that gets upstreamed into the community. Many vendors do that. Many customers would rather actually pull software from an open community that's been upstreamed, vetted, tested, high quality, and leverage that with Zephyr. The licensing is also very permissive, so that means that there's no restrictions that you have to contribute anything you innovate around it back. You can leverage it and deploy without necessarily having to do that. So the permissive licensing is another big benefit of leveraging that specific technology. The other thing, Nit, is we want to make sure also that even at the board level, the evaluation board level, that there's consistency so we can plug and play boards with different vendors and build up a solution and evaluate that without having to wire and solder and do all this other weird stuff. So we're about software driving what even the evaluation board looks like in order to drive that interoperability for that software.
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Nit Dard3:02
You talked about the hardware layer. So what's Analog Devices' sort of approach across various platforms?
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Rob Oshana3:12
We do this across well, OS. So Zephyr, we also integrate into Linux, which is another open community. We start with a common device model, so all of our low-level drivers are architected around a common template driver template that's done for reuse and scalability across the company. We have a very robust inner-source collaboration strategy. So this allows us to standardize on a common template driver, the hardware or driver model, and then integrate that into these operating systems as necessary.
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Nit Dard3:46
That's interesting. So what are the things that customers need to know when they're working with this?
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Rob Oshana3:51
Well, when customers are working with us, one of the things we want them to know first of all is we're really driving the open-source communities now. We're much more involved in Zephyr, in Linux, even in some of the open-source program office initiatives that are going on. So by engaging with them, we get the leverage that we need to drive support for all the thousands of products that we have in a much more interoperable way than we did in the past. As we start merging ADI and all these other technologies that have come in over the last years, this is going to allow us to move a lot faster and to provide the right support for our customers.
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Nit Dard4:28
One of the things I think with doing things in software, for example, I learned about this with the software IOs of a single-pair Ethernet. That's kind of interesting. Is that kind of an extension of what you're doing?
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Rob Oshana4:38
It is. It's exactly an extension of what we're doing. It's built upon that same framework that we're providing, and higher up the stack is where we believe we can differentiate a lot more going forward as well. This is an example of differentiating higher up the stack built upon a common robust enablement strategy.
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Nit Dard4:56
Yeah, and I think one of the things I learned about this one is that by doing that, you're reducing the number of SKUs you need when you're going into building automation or factory automation environments, as long as you can use single-pair Ethernet.
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Rob Oshana5:07
Yeah, exactly. And the more general way of talking about that is what I refer to as single-die, multi-market. So creating fewer die devices and using software to go into different markets. I think this also can be a differentiator. People have been talking about the software-defined world. This is one manifestation of it, I guess.
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Nit Dard5:25
It really is.
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Rob Oshana5:28
We, aside from providing these common abstraction layers, we're doing more with software to drive the hardware design early on in the process, to drive a better programming model. So we're doing that as well. We call it shift left. So we're shifting left our software enablement, both in how we help design the device and how we enable it. So now with first silicon, we have much more software than we have in the past.
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Nit Dard5:51
Well, Rob, thank you very much.
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Rob Oshana5:53
Thank you, Nit. Good to see you.