A Year in Review: Knowledge Shared at International Conferences in 2023

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to look back on the past months and the achieved work. At Savoir-faire Linux, 2023 has been very prolific with a lot of interesting projects. Thanks to our customers, we were able to present our results in multiple high-level conferences.

As a proud member of the open-source community, Savoir-faire Linux supports the sharing of knowledge in the community. This year, we sponsored the Embedded Recipes conference as a Supporter, were a Bronze sponsor for the 2023 Embedded Open Source Summit and a Gold sponsor of the 2023 LF Energy Summit.

This article provides a view of what we did, to give you a view of how we can help your projects.

LF Energy Seapath

As a key player of the SEAPATH project supported by the LF Energy, our team took part in a large number of conferences to present our know-how around the project and evangelize the community about the benefits of these solutions.

1. At the FOSDEM in Brussels, in February, Erwann Roussy made a Presentation of the SEAPATH project. He explained the origins and features of the project, and showcased how the effort is put to the test of the system.
2. In June, at the Embedded Open Source Summit in Prague, Enguerrand de Ribaucourt and Mathieu Dupré presented Implementing and Validating Linux Cyber Security Requirements: SEAPATH, a Case Study (YouTube link). They highlighted our approach to follow the French national cyber-security agency (ANSSI) BP-028 guidelines to improve the security of critical electrical substations.

3. At the same conference, Eloi Bail presented SEAPATH: Configuring and Testing an Industrial-Grade Linux Platform for Critical Real-Time Applications in the Energy Sector (YouTube link) with Aurélien Wataré from out partner RTE. They described the continuous integration (CI) infrastructure used to develop, test and deploy the SEAPATH project.
4. Still at EOSS in Prague, Mathieu Dupré demonstrated Using SEAPATH to Deploy Low Latency Virtual Machines with Redundancy (YouTube link) with Florent Carli from our partner RTE, a tutorial to show how to configure and deploy applications on the SEAPATH project.
5. At the LF Energy Summit in June, in Paris, Erwann Roussy showcased our CI/CD and testing process in his presentation Ensuring Requirements on the SEAPATH Project: Testing Process and Continuous Integration (youtube link)

6. At the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in September in Bilbao, Eloi Bail and Mathieu Dupré presented SEAPATH: A LF Energy Project for Critical Infrastructure with an Emphasis on Software Supply Chain Security (youtube link). They compared the benefits and drawbacks of a pre-built Debian and custom-built Yocto for the SEAPATH project, with a focus on the cybersecurity, stability and resilience aspects.

7. In the same conference, Erwan Roussy presented how we use Yocto in The LF Energy SEAPATH project, a Yocto use case for a software-defined architecture to virtualize power system substations (YouTube link), as an example of a real-world Yocto application for a highly constrained system.
8. Finally, still in the same conference, Christophe Villemer shared his insights in a panel about How Open Source Collaboration Is Transforming the Power Systems Sector (YouTube link), in which he highlighted how SEAPATH is one of the solutions to transition the energy sector to a cleaner future.

To date, this has been one of our most active years in terms of conference talks. We are always glad to showcase our work and methodologies to the community, and hope to continue this effort in the coming year.

Embedded Linux

While a part of our team contributes regularly to the LF Energy SEAPATH project, the variety of our customers enables us to work with a large variety of technologies where we can showcase our expertise:

1. In September at the Embedded Recipes in Paris, Philip-Dylan Gleonec discussed Pipewire as the heart of a Linux-based audio system.
   He showed how Pipewire solves multiple pain-points in the design of Linux audio systems, and the progress it brings over legacy solutions. Thanks again to BayLibre for the organization!

   This work was based on Le Bao Tin Ha and Elinor Montmasson’s work:

   • PipeWire in a Linux embedded project: a multi-ports audio system demo on i.MX8 (Part 1)
   • PipeWire in a Linux embedded project: a multi-ports audio system demo on i.MX8 (Part 2)
   • Resampling impact on performance in embedded audio pipeline with Pipewire
2. During the Yocto Virtual Summit in November, Enguerrand de Ribaucourt gave a talk on Yocto VS Code IDE Integration.
   He showed his work on the newly revamped official Yocto VS Code extension and how it can help new Yocto users.
3. At the Open Source Experience in Paris in December, Philip-Dylan Gleonec presented “Zephyr: modern software practices for small devices”. He presented the arguments in favor of Zephyr on the RTOS market, with a focus on what eases real product development.
4. At the same conference, Eloi Bail took part in a round-table discussion “La sécurité des systèmes embarqués : une démarche à la fois technique et organisationnelle”, discussing the technical and organizational challenges of embedded systems security.

Conclusion

The year 2023 has been very prolific and enabled us to share a lot of our know-how through conference presentations. We are thankful to our partners for the opportunities and are committed to continue on this path for the year 2024.