[Replicant] Trustonic TEE in Samsung SoCs

[Bob Summerwill]

I've been reading about the ARTIK-5 board which Samsung have just released:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3037444/hardware/samsungs-artik-5-a-raspberry-pi-look-alike-now-shipping-for-99.html

It seems like we have a bit of a nightmare of a board there.

Some lowlights:

* Price.   $99.   Ouch.

* Samsung KNOX, using Trustonic's TEE (
https://www.trustonic.com/technology/trusted-execution-environment) which
sounds much like the notorious Intel ME to me.    Does anybody here have
experience of Trustonic TEE, and can confirm that. or explain what it does
better than me?    I think it's more proprietary software on-silicon, which
constrains what you can run on your own device.

* Support for Google's Thread, a connectivity specification to link up IoT
devices.   I had never heard of this new standard to this point, but it
seems to be different to Google's Weave, and they both appear to be newly
made-up Google-controlled standards, in contrast to AllJoyn and IoTivity,
which at least have multiple major stakeholders behind them.     I assume
this "support" is OS level.    If the protocol required hardware or
firmware support, that would be very odd.

* "The board will come pre-loaded with Linux-based Fedora OS. It's not
clear yet if Artik supports Google's Brillo, an IoT development platform
for connected home devices, which is closely tied to Thread. Intel's Edison
developer board already supports Brillo." - Not a positive.

* "Samsung is also providing software tools, security features and services
through its SAMI cloud platform. For example, a cloud service may decide
when to turn an air conditioner on or off based on data collected from a
smart meter. SAMI could allow sensor data to be fed into the cloud for
analysis." - Please no.

* "Another interesting use of Artik could be for health and fitness. Data
collected from a wearable can be sent for monitoring and analysis to
Samsung's Simband cloud-based health analytics service. Samsung has also
tied the Artik boards to driver assistance, service robots and cloud-based
security services." - Again, not good.


-- 
bob at summerwill.net
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