S02E09: Creating the sustainable smart home: Why Matter matters
Sujata Neidig (00:00)
Matter gives more opportunities to companies on how they can leverage their devices to help
consumers lower their carbon footprint.
Kyle Fox (00:24):
This is the Smarter World Podcast, focusing on breakthrough technologies that make our connectedworld better, safer, and more secure. I'm host, Kyle Fox. Each episode we introduce bright minds
and their approach to a more sustainable world. We discuss the opportunities and challenges they
face and how technology can change the world for the better. Today we're talking smart homes andspecifically how our smart home can lead to a more sustainable home. The term smart home has
become part of today's lexicon, although we've only really just started to unlock the potential ofwhat a smart home can do. The dramatic growth of connected devices within the home is driving
the need to establish a more universal protocol for smart home devices to communicate with one
another regardless of the different brands and platforms they're built for. Officially launched in
November of 2022, the Matter protocol was created to unify and encourage interoperability
between devices and platforms.
(01:19):Matter has opened doors to more possibilities in the smart home and how those homes can help
support greater energy efficiency and management. To talk about these possibilities, I'm joined by
Sujata Neidig, NXP's Director of Marketing for Wireless Connectivity. She leads NXP's standards
effort for IOT connectivity. Sujata has 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry andrepresents NXP on the Thread Group and Connectivity Standards Alliance's board of directors, aswell as serves as Thread Group's Vice President of Marketing. If you're not aware of the ThreadGroup, it is a nonprofit focused on making Thread the foundation for the internet of things in homes
and commercial buildings. Welcome, Sujata.
Sujata Neidig (02:03):
Thank you, Kyle. It's so great to be here and chatting with you.
Kyle Fox (02:05):
Likewise. I'm really excited about our talk today. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how
you came to be a Matter expert.
Sujata Neidig (02:13):
I've been with the company for a number of years working in product management, productmarketing, business development type roles, and I got involved with the smart home industry bysupporting customers, and that led me into the wireless connectivity world and standards and how
we can break down silos and bring industries together to solve common problems that the end
users' experience. And so that's how I got involved into standards and then that evolved into
Matter, and it's been a really exciting time. In my opinion, it's been an inflection in the smart homeindustry, and having technologies converged to really drive better user experiences and wider
adoption.

Kyle Fox (02:56):
You've been there from the beginning, right?
Sujata Neidig (02:57):
Yes.
Kyle Fox (02:58):
This is a very evolving industry, but it really has only been maybe in the last decade or so that thishas been going and you've been there from the beginning.
Sujata Neidig (03:05):
Yes, exactly. It's been exciting.
Kyle Fox (03:07):
When I think in my mind about the last two decades, I remember in my own experience that there
have been some attempts in the industry to unify device communication. Can you explain a little bit
about what Matter is and how is it different from existing and maybe some prior technologies?
Sujata Neidig (03:22):
In the smart home industry, we've heard about smart home products for many years. I thinkconsumers like ourselves have had smart devices in their homes, but it really has not fulfilled thatpromise of a smart home where taking control and having that become more automated to makelives easier for consumers. In the past, what we've seen is a lot of silos. So the different platform
providers like Apple and Samsung and Google, they have their different systems that they use andconsumers get forced into picking one platform and having to buy products that only work with that
platform. And so what that does is it really reduces consumer choice and flexibility and it drives lackof interoperability, which is a huge frustration point for consumers. The last thing you want is to buy
this really cool device that you take home and then you can't set it up properly to work with all of
your other devices.
(04:19):And Matter changes that. One of the biggest differences I see with Matter is that it is supported by
all of the major consumer brand companies that I talk about, Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung,
SmartThings, even companies like Comcast and IKEA, they are adopting Matter. So there is acommon approach to saying we want to drive the industry forward and really create more home
automation, and the only way we can do that is if we work together as an industry, and I think you
stated it very well. Matter is a universal protocol for smart home devices so that these devices canspeak to each other in a common language across brands and across platforms so that they justwork with each other.
Kyle Fox (05:03):
These really large companies driving large ecosystems, I like how you described that. It's a Samsung
ecosystem, a Google ecosystem, that they're actually committed to saying, "Yeah, we got to be able
to communicate together." But what kind of blew my mind is you use the company IKEA in this.
When I think of high-tech, I think Google and there's phones and that sort of thing and devices, buteven IKEA?

Sujata Neidig (05:24):
Yes, exactly. Companies like IKEA, there's another brand called Aqara that's fairly new in the US but
has been around for decades and providing smart home solutions, and they provide all the different
aspects from sensors to door locks and hubs and lighting, but they've also adopted Matter; eventhough they create all the devices themselves, they want users to be able to control these devices
through whatever platform they choose and to potentially augment them with other types of smart
devices from different brands that maybe they don't provide themselves.
Kyle Fox (05:59):
So the picture in my head is that the industry is doing this right. People throw out the termcoopetition, certainly standards are a way to level that playing field so we can all communicate
together, but it really looks like Matter has become the way to go with this.
Sujata Neidig (06:12):
In millions of homes today, Matter is already enabled because apps that run on Google phones andiPhones have support for Matter. All of the major smart home speakers, the Echo device, HomePod,they support Matter. So people already have Matter in their homes today, and that's anotherunique capability of Matter is that consumers will be able to adopt Matter devices into their homes
at a much faster pace than previously they've been able to.
Kyle Fox (06:45):
And that seems to be so critical, right? It's not like, "Hey, we've got the new standard, we've got the
new thing. Now you've got to go replace everything." What you're describing is integrating into yourexisting tech within your home.
Sujata Neidig (06:54):
Exactly. I think when people hear the word standard, sometimes there's a perception that standards
are all about building technology from the ground up, building it all from scratch. But Matter isdifferent because Matter is using existing technologies where it makes sense. For example, it's built
on ... Internet protocol is what runs the entire internet globally and then any kind of app can run on
top of it. And so that's the same baseline foundation technology that Matter uses and Matter alsobuilds in this capability that they call bridging. So Matter and the Connectivity Standards Alliance,
which is the organization that owns Matter, the member companies realize that there are alreadymillions of smart home devices in people's homes today and we don't want to obsolete what's
already deployed or cause people to have to throw them away and replace them because that goesagainst all of the sustainability efforts that companies are investing in. So with Matter bridging, you
can do a software update to a hub in your home and have it support the non-Matter devices bybridging them into the Matter network.
Kyle Fox (08:07):
Incredible. So they really thought this out. It was not only I want to be able to use it in devices we're
now deploying today and moving forward, but we recognize that there's a whole bunch of stuff out
there and you can actually bridge in those legacy devices and get the benefits, right? Is that what
you're saying?
Sujata Neidig (08:22):

Exactly. And I think Matter is really driven from a market-based approach. So Matter gets definedwhat device types, what are those capabilities, how is it implemented is based off of defining firstwhat the use cases are, what are the problem statements that the users experience? And thentaking that and looking at, okay, how do we address these requirements and these challenges? And
so I think that’s another difference in how Matter has evolved as a standard that maybe some of themore traditional standards people may be familiar with in the past.
Kyle Fox (08:55):
I'd like to expand a little bit more into some details there. So we talk about these devices coming inand legacy devices, new devices, they're communicating. I loved how you said IP protocol. We'reusing well-known tried and true ways of getting this information back and forth and I'm curious,
when Matter was first introduced, what comes to my head is that security of all these devices allconnected together, that kind of had to have been at least mostly top of mind, if not one of themost important use cases for the protocol and it sounds like it'd be quite challenging to bringeverything together. What is different about Matter and how it implements security to keep thesedevices secure?
Sujata Neidig (09:35):
That's a really interesting point because I think what we have seen in the last, maybe five to sevenyears, is a much higher awareness from consumers about the security of the data that smart devices
uses, and in the past, the technologies and standards and devices that companies brought to market
were really consumer driven mentality around it has to be lowest cost and so security was anafterthought. What we within Matter and NXP with our strong depth of expertise in security and theimpact that lack of security can have has really mobilized the industry to think about security
upfront. So Matter really did do that. It was pretty much a key design tenant for Matter to be
developed on how do we make devices secure and consumers comfortable that they are secure? Sowhat I can tell you is that what Matter did to define security for devices is very unique than previous
wireless connectivity protocols is that Matter requires a device to go through an attestation process
before it joins a Matter network.
(10:48):The user will bring home a new device and pull up their phone and scan the QR code to onboardthat device to the local network. When it does that, the device has to prove that it is what it says it
is, so that it is a light bulb from company Bulby, let's say. It also has to prove that it is Mattercompatible so that it has to prove it has a Matter certification. Matter does this through a processthat they call attestation, and so there's a device attestation certificate that needs to be embeddedin every Matter device to prove that identity and that it is a Matter certified device.
Kyle Fox (11:28):
It's also powerful that when you have to go through the product definition, if you're going to deploy
something that's Matter enabled, the security, it's not an afterthought. It's not a what we'll do it at
the end. It's at the very beginning. It's embedded in the actual standard itself and what actually has
to happen to the device. As a homeowner and a high-tech user myself, that gives me a good feeling,right?
Sujata Neidig (11:47):

It doesn't stop at the onboarding. So once a Matter device is on the network, all data transmissions
are encrypted because its IP, devices can transfer data from one device to another directly, so it
doesn't go through any kind of a gateway that's doing translation function. So it's not unpacking thedata packets and then figuring out where it needs to go and repacking it and sending it. So that also
provides another level of security from a communication perspective.
Kyle Fox (12:16):
It keeps it local. You just change the paradigm. In my head I was like, they communicate and thenthe data goes up to a server somewhere, it gets played around with, comes back down, but that's
not what's going on. It's staying local to that home. That makes a lot of sense because if I had asensor in my home that's trying to turn on lights and air conditioning that has to be monitored, I
don't want that data to be going up into a server somewhere.
Sujata Neidig (12:36):
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. That word local network. Matter is a local network and that is
critical not just to security but also for response times or latency. It provides more reliability so thatyou can use your devices even if internet goes down and that's what you need when you're doinghome automation. The last thing you want is to not be able to turn on your smart light through yourphone just because the internet is down.
Kyle Fox (13:04):
I hadn't considered that. I don't want to worry about somebody else's server as to whether or not I
can turn on a light bulb. Yeah. We've talked about the infrastructure and it sounds like it's beenreally well-designed, really well thought up from the beginning, and I wonder if we can wade intosome of those use cases that we've been teasing about here, the cool stuff. What does Matterenable that people can use? Maybe we can start with what type of application devices Matter istargeted for in a little more detail.
Sujata Neidig (13:28):
Matter is targeted for all kinds of smart home devices, but of course there's a number of them, so
Matter can't support them all at the same time. So Matter was launched, like you said, a year ago
with a set number of device types, but Matter is an evolving standard, so every once or twice a year
there's an update to the Matter standard to either improve on some of the features or how
developers use and implement Matter or to add new device types. So today there's sensors, window
shades, thermostats, HVAC controls, lighting. Those are all different types of applications that aresupported by Matter already as we speak. Other types of applications or device types that Matter islooking to support are things like air purifiers or air quality sensors, water leakage sensors, energy
management.
(14:20):Once you have interoperability between devices, that can open up a lot of opportunity on how tobetter manage energy between all these devices in your smart home. For example, if it's peak hours,
maybe you don't want to have your washing machine cycle going at full speed. Maybe it pauses it
until the load is lowered and then it reengages. And there's all these different use cases for energy
management that can be supported once you have a common language like Matter for all thedevices to speak to each other with.

Kyle Fox (14:53):
Energy management, kind of top of mind for a lot of people around the world. When I think about
the way you're describing that a smart home can make it easier for consumers to manage, reduce
their energy usage, and that's what I want to unpack. It means to me that the home could
participate in being more sustainable to the ecosystem. So we talked about security attacks andprotection against that, Matter also addresses that sustainability aspect of the smart home. Can you
expand a little bit more on that? How is that going to work? You mentioned appliances talking toeach other. How does that work in the energy side?
Sujata Neidig (15:22):
There's already things that people are aware of today with your smart thermostat. If you have a
Nest thermostat, you get a message saying peak usage, we're going to lower your temperature orraise your temperature if it's hot outside to use less energy. Now the user always has control tooverride that, but there is that information being given to the consumer. So if you take that a stepfurther and have it be defined that there are parameters about energy usage that are built into thestandard to collect that information or have that information made available to other devices, thenthere's a lot of things that can be done from automation so that the user doesn't have to think
about everything themselves. It can prompt them and say, "Hey, water heater is on right now.
Maybe we should put the dryer in tumble mode while the water heater gets to temperature to saveenergy."(16:13):And if you can give the user those data points on what systems in their home are using the mostenergy, then they can make better decisions on how they want to have their smart home be
operated and how to manage that smart home.
Kyle Fox (16:28):
I'm starting to see the picture, you were talking about putting that dryer that consumes a lot ofenergy into a certain state or perhaps a delay when it does, but what if it's a smart home that has agiant solar panel ray on its roof? The user may actually be more sustainable to run the drier in the
middle of the day when the sun's up and it's getting the most free energy coming from the sun andnot tapping the grid at all. If you can hook in these devices so that something understands what adryer is and what parameters it does, then it could actually make that decision and let the user
decide how they want to manage their overall energy consumption.
Sujata Neidig (17:03):
And Matter enables that. I'm not saying that Matter is doing all the energy management, but Matter
gives more opportunities to companies on how they can leverage their devices to help consumers
lower their carbon footprint. Another aspect, a little bit different twist, but like we talked about,Matter is also a local network, so it enables a lot more things to be done locally without having to go
through a server to the cloud. So that also from a system level has a lower energy impact, lower
carbon footprint and helps manage just overall system energy usage.
Kyle Fox (17:37):
That makes sense. And what keeps popping in my head now is that it's also money management. If I
can come in with these devices and say, "I actually can reduce my energy cost," that's got to beimportant, right?

Sujata Neidig (17:48):
Absolutely. And Matter will make it so that information is available. So device manufacturers canshow consumers data about how much energy and then what that translates into, the cost of theenergy that they're using. And the cost of energy has risen globally and consumers are more andmore aware of their costs and so they're not motivated by just the carbon footprint andsustainability. They are definitely motivated to reduce their overall costs and Matter does help
enable that type of way of consumers to see where their cost is going with their utility bills.
Kyle Fox (18:27):
I wanted to switch a little bit off the use cases and just talk about what does it take to build anddeploy a Matter device.
Sujata Neidig (18:33):
I have been in this semiconductor software industry for quite a while, so we know how complex it isfor our customers to take technologies and capabilities and build an end product, deploy it, and beable to maintain and operate that and make sure it's functional for years for their consumer. So
that's what we do. We try to take that complexity out for our customers and help enable them tobuild innovative products. So Matter is no different. Matter can be complex because it covers a
range of devices and it's about connecting these devices to other devices that a company may not
own. It could be from another brand. So when we talk to companies in the industry that want tobuild Matter devices, there's a few things that we like to walk them through. First of all is what is thecomplexity of the device that they're building?
(19:25):Is it a simple sensor that's doing very limited function and then goes into sleep mode for most of thetime? Or is it something like a thermostat that is also in sleep mode most of the time, but when theuser comes up to it, there's a nicer user interface or it could be an access point in the home that's
very complex in managing ethernet, Wi-Fi, maybe 15.4 networks. So really understanding thecomplexity of the device that you're building will drive them towards then what is the architectureof the system that they need to design. So wireless connectivity is a piece of it. Processing orcomputing and security is a piece of that. And so building off of all that, we guide them to show
them if it's a simple sensor, you are going to want optimized for power consumption, cost andfootprint.
(20:17):
If it's something that's in a gateway, it needs to have a lot of processing capabilities and be able tomanage a lot of different networks. So we talk about standalone architecture and hosted
architecture. A standalone architecture would be something that is a single chip design that thewireless connectivity and the application processing requirements and security requirement all
managed within a single MCU. But for more complex systems, you'll pair the wireless connectivity
chip with a host processor and it could be an MCU like our i.MX RT devices, or it could be a Linuxbased MPU like our i.MX apps processors. So that's all of the components it takes to build thesystem, the connectivity, the processing, and the security. So once they understand whatarchitecture they need, then that helps guide them in the components they need to select, and thenthey go into their prototyping and development and debug phase, and companies like NXP, we
provide all of that hardware and software and enablement to help customers develop their code or
their application.
(21:26):

Us helping our partners get products to market, I think, also the standards bodies like Connectivity
Standards Alliance is a great source of support from product manufacturers. Matter is an open
source project, so the software or the SDK is in an open source GitHub repo, and if you're a memberof CSA, then there's a lot of collaboration that happens between member companies and a lot ofsharing of best practices or how different companies have addressed different challenges or lessons
learned. So that's another way that companies can get support.
Kyle Fox (21:59):
Thank you for describing that. What occurred to me is that it's not like this fundamentally different
way to go and build something. There are things you have to do at the beginning to make sure thatyou're Matter ready, but we're not talking about a fundamental difference to the high-tech industry
to actually deploy these devices. So it's not a barrier is my point.
Sujata Neidig (22:16):
It's not a barrier. I think what it does is that companies really have to reevaluate what their businessmodels are and how they differentiate and where they innovate because Matter will open up more
opportunities for them while it also, like you said earlier, creates kind of a level playing field. But I
see that as a good thing because it's level playing field for the foundational element like theplumbing. And now you can invest your engineering resources on how you're going to innovate forthe user experience on how they interact with your devices to be more comfortable or be moreenergy efficient in their home or be more secure.
Kyle Fox (22:51):
That treadmill of change and innovation and movement that the whole high-tech industry is basedon is what you're describing that gets it moving forward so they don't have to worry about thefoundation.
Sujata Neidig (23:01):
For product manufacturers, their market TAM is now exponentially larger because it's, like I said
earlier, a Matter is supported by all of these major brands. And so if you're a product developer
making a door lock, your door lock, you can make one SKU that will work with Google, Amazon,Apple, SmartThings, and that opens up a market for you with a single investment. You also said
about scalability and platform. You can take a platform approach to how you implement Matter andscale it from a standalone to a hosted and just changing some key components, but not changing
the overall implementation of Matter. So that's a way that we can help customers really build out aMatter portfolio more quickly and get to market.
Kyle Fox (23:46):
Thank you so much for sharing all this. We've unpacked a lot of cool stuff in a very short period oftime. Before we close, on our podcast we usually ask a guest how they envision a greener moresustainable world 50 years from now. But for this episode, I want to do something a little different.
I'm going to take a little departure from that question and what I want to do is rephrase it a bit. I
want to ask you what exciting stuff is happening with Matter that will enable a greener world in that
future?
Sujata Neidig (24:11):

I really think that having a greener world is something that is top of mind of so many people, and I
know me personally, I've invested a lot of my personal energy into how can me and my family live ina smarter, more energy efficient way. So I find it very exciting that Matter is a technology that is
enabling new ways for the industry to address sustainability. And so I think looking ahead, Matter isrolling out a lot of the basic device types and the basic capabilities. There's so much opportunity tobuild on that and really not just define maybe different device types, but also how to interact thosedifferent devices to create a more autonomous way for smart homes to be energy efficient or moresustainable so that the home truly is smart and not full of smart devices. So to me, this wholeconcept of autonomous operation with user consent is something that I'm really excited and looking
forward to because I think that is a way that people can make more of a meaningful impact.
Kyle Fox (25:17):
Thank you for sharing that. You've given me a glimpse of that future world through your eyes, and it
sounds like a wonderful future, and I want to participate in it. We've come to the end of our podcast
and it's been an absolute delight having you on. This is a meaty subject and I'd love to have you backnext year so we can see how things have progressed. But I want to thank you for your time andbeing on here with us today.
Sujata Neidig (25:37):
Thank you, Kyle. It has been fantastic to catch up with you and talk about something that I'm
passionate about and that is making an impact in the industry.
Kyle Fox (25:46):
Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.