High-performance embedded secure hardware has long been the prerogative of high-compute devices like PCs and smartphones. As penetration into these devices flattens, fresh demand is coming from the IoT ecosystem, says ABI Research.
“While embedded security is not new for IoT, which have leveraged secure elements and integrated circuits for some time to offer secure storage of certificates and keys, it is the integration of high-performant hardware that is breaking through,” says Michela Menting, senior research director of trusted device solutions at ABI Research.
“Securing application execution, for example, through the use of trusted execution environment (TEE) technology, is in greater demand than ever for IoT devices; and not just for mission-critical or functional safety use cases, but also for general purpose use cases.”
Michela Menting
This is largely due to better technological developments from the semiconductor vendors themselves, with the adaptation of TEEs to microcontrollers. A greater competitive ecosystem is emerging, with incredible advances by companies like ARM for security in Cortex-M cores, but also from open-source movements such as RISC-V.
While TEE shipments for SoCs continue to dominate at almost US$1 billion in 2023 (notably selling into the smartphone market), the growth rate remains at a stable 14% year-on-year, while shipments for TEE-enabled Microcontrollers are expected to triple in that same period.
