Matter
Do you know what Matter is? This is not a deep question about the origins of the universe or something. Perhaps you have heard of Project CHIP. That sounds like something to do with semiconductors, but actually CHIP stands for Connected Home over IP (and IP stands for Internet Protocol). Matter is the new name for Project CHIP. I'm going to use Matter throughout this post even though for most of the existence of the program it was called Project CHIP.
The goal of the project was to create a standard for IoT in smart homes. Today, there is no standardization so each supplier of smart light switches, thermostats, and things like that have their own protocols. To support them, each smart speaker or smartphone has to support that protocol or the manufacturers of the smart devices need to supply Apps. This is obviously a lot of redundant effort, and as the number of devices that need to control devices ("Alexa turn on the lights") grows, and the number of controlled devices grows, the number of combinations grows quadratically and so this is obviously unscalable. So the big players got together a few years ago and planned to do something about it.
In my Semiconductor 101 presentation, I have an old slide showing many of the names in IoT. There are hundreds. You can't really read the slide, the idea is just to show how fragmented IoT is. Matter doesn't do anything to consolidate the industry, but it does strike a blow against fragmentation at the protocol level. If you are anything to do with the smart home, then you need to know about and implement Matter.
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The project group, now known as the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), previously the Zigbee Alliance, was started by Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast, and the Zigbee Alliance in 2019. Notable in that list are all the smart speakers, plus?iOS and Android. You won't be s surprised to know that the list of members has now grown to include over 400 other companies. Matter is not the only standard that this organization drives. They also seem to be responsible for?Zigbee, Smart Energy, Green Power, JupiterMesh, and Rf4ce.