With AI headlines, market shifts, and plenty of speculation, the future feels a bit noisy right now. Instead of being Scrooges about it, we called on the Ghosts of PHYTEC’s Past, Present, and Future to share what they know. Consider it a little holiday gift of insight from our 100% human Hardware, Software, Production Test, Sales, Supply Chain, and Support teams.
🕰 Past: What we’ve accomplished this year that benefits our customers — the tools, support, and innovations that helped projects move forward.
📍 Present: What’s available today that you can take advantage of — from development kits and software updates to engineering services and support resources.
🔮 Future: What’s in the works, and advice to help you plan ahead — whether it’s upcoming platforms, lifecycle planning, or strategies to meet evolving requirements.
This gives us a clear look at where we’ve been, what you can use right now, and what’s coming down the pipeline, all aimed at helping you develop smarter, faster, and with confidence in the new year.
PHYTEC's mission is to simplify embedded technology for developers. PHYTEC was founded by Physicist and Inventor Karl Neubecker in the 1980s and the origin of the name PHYTEC comes from the bridge between Physics (PHY) and Technology (TEC) – allowing inventors (like himself) a platform to bring a theory or idea to reality. He realized that every embedded system needed the same base - Controller, Power, RAM, Flash – so these were modularized and designed to drop in without reinventing the wheel each time he wanted to try something new. A System on Module (SOM) solution allows you to focus on an idea and application without having to relearn or rebuild the basic embedded system – effectively bridging the gap for everyday engineers and making complex embedded electronic design and manufacturing accessible for a wide range of applications.
There is an immediate cost savings by leveraging a SOM in your design to accelerate time to market. However, PHYTEC continues the work in long term maintenance to keep your products in production. In 2025 PHYTEC worked on a mix of new product launches and development tools with BSP releases/upgrades and documentation. Each team at PHYTEC provided some insight on 2025:
Hardware Team: The Hardware team invested in our PHYTEC Pinmuxing tool. This tool was designed in-house and lets customers explore all the available options on their SOMs, making it easier to understand what features they can access. It’s user-friendly and tailored to the SOM connector pinout. While some chip partners offer similar utilities, they can be overly complex with BGA routing that is taken care of on the SOM. Our tool stands out for its simplicity and is tailored specifically to SOM applications.
🟩PHYTEC offers a series of Training on Module videos: Check out the pinmux tool and PHYTEC Pinmuxing Tool Training on Module Video
Software Team: This past year, our team really focused on strengthening the basics and helping out in customer support. It gave us a front-row seat to the challenges our customers face, and being able to help solve those pain points has been incredibly rewarding. In addition, we continued to release and maintain Board Support Packages (BSPs) across PHYTEC platforms, delivering 16 Linux-based BSP releases this year to keep kernels, toolchains, and drivers up to date. These BSP releases provide a stable foundation for development and production, helping customers move confidently from prototyping to deployment.
🐧 Explore BSPs: Latest BSP Releases and Documentation
Production Test Team: The PHYTEC Test Engineering team designs and fabricates Test Systems for all products. These projects incorporate electrical, mechanical, and software development. This year marked the launch of the phyCORE-AM67x, expanding our hardware portfolio with a compact, high-performance platform built for edge AI, vision, and compute-intensive applications. The new phyCORE-AM67x SOM release announced in September 2025 is ready for mass production including a comprehensive Production Test Fixture installed in our many manufacturing sites globally. Test coverage through boundary scan and functional testing are run and results stored for every SOM produced.
🧪 Learn more about the phyCORE-AM67x: New Product phyCORE-AM67x Information
Sales Team: This year, we’ve really focused on staying ahead of what our customers need, trying to anticipate challenges before they happen. Security and CRA compliance is on the horizon and we are ready to guide you in navigating these challenges.
📄 Start getting up to speed with an application on the phyCORE-i.MX8MP: Secure by Design Whitepaper
Support Team: In 2025 our Applications Engineers focused on giving customers more choice, better visibility, and stronger support early in the development cycle. After attending the Open Source Summit in Amsterdam and learning about Vulnscout.io, a self-serve CVE analysis tool that lets customers monitor their production software for vulnerabilities, one of our engineers created a step-by-step guide showing how to integrate VulnScout into a Yocto-based workflow and run a full CVE scan on the phyCORE-AM67x. PHYTEC works with many trusted experts in the industry and has the experience to point customers in the right direction toward a solution.
🔐Try the Application Guide on phyCORE-AM67x: Vulnscout App Note – phyCORE-AM67x
Supply Chain Team: The last 5 years of component shortages have highlighted the value of PHYTEC’s Supply Chain Engineering. Beyond accelerating time to market, PHYTEC SOMs help customers offload critical part management and keep products in production for 10–15 years — a capability demonstrated by our continued sale of the PCM-001, a 20-year-old platform. With 40 years in electronics manufacturing, PHYTEC has navigated allocations, EOLs, and technology shifts, building deep experience in problem-solving and keeping production running smoothly. This expertise is now further strengthened through our recognition as a TI Premium Partner, giving customers added confidence in roadmap visibility and supply reliability.
📖 Check out our growing portfolio of SOMs: Active phyCORE System on Modules Product List
PHYTEC is more than a SOM vendor. Behind the scenes is a team of Engineers that understand the steep learning curves, unique use cases, complexity, software abstraction, and desire for a source of truth in embedded systems development. The advice below centers around resources available that you might not know PHYTEC has available. Here is what the engineers at PHYTEC want you to be aware of that you could use today:
Hardware Team: Schematic reviews are a huge advantage. Having a PHYTEC engineer confirm that your design is functional and doing it at no cost is an invaluable resource for customers. For teams building today, the phyCORE-AM67x Development Kit is available and ready to support rapid prototyping and validation. These are known good/validated circuits (with Software support) that you can copy directly into your design.
Software Team: Right now, one of the best resources we offer is schematic reviews. Seriously, it’s something every customer should consider using. Getting a PHYTEC engineer to look over your design early can save a lot of headaches down the line.
A little louder for those in the back…the SOM designers will check for common mistakes and save you a design spin, highly recommend free schematic reviews.
In addition, the Software Team just wants to help customers with their Embedded Linux development. We understand the steep learning curve with embedded Linux and the Yocto Project. We have also seen how taking the time to setup up your infrastructure can greatly reduce maintenance and portability. Since our team works with U-Boot, Linux, device trees, Yocto, meta-layer, upstreaming, and test configs every day we can help you in adopting best practices through training, setting up your software foundations, or bundling packages together.
Production Test Team: When working on your carrier board design, you can rely on the SOM being fully tested on delivery, but don't forget to Design for Manufacturing as well. We recommend adding smoke tests for power rails on the carrier board and doing a simple boot test upon mating the SOM to the carrier board in your production process the first time. It's good to do these tests early on in the assembly process. For more context, our friends at the Pick, Place, Podcast did a really good episode about Inevitable Failures this year that we highly recommend listening to.
Sales Team: If you want a schematic review just let us know, we just need your schematic as a PDF. But also right now we recommend our software trainings as a great way to sharpen skills and get more comfortable with PHYTEC platforms.
Support Team: If there’s one thing we’d stress today: design for software. Pick displays already supported in the kernel, double-check datasheets for timings, and invest time in Yocto early. It makes a huge difference down the line. Yocto has a significant learning curve, but the foundation will save you a lot of maintenance headache later. Our favorite book to get started is Mastering Embedded Linux Development - Fourth Edition by Chris Simmonds and Frank Vasquez.
Supply Chain Team: The biggest thing you can do right now is to stay informed about the component constraints upcoming for the memory market. The global semiconductor landscape is facing a structural DRAM shortage, driven by soaring demand for AI workloads. Technologies across the board (HBM, DDR5, LPDDR5, DDR4, LPDDR4) are constrained and extending to raw NAND supplies (including eMMC) which are tightening. If you are already using a PHYTEC SOM in your design, a lot of the work is offloaded, but we do recommend building up an old fashioned RSS feed and making it a habit to check the electronics component news stream. In addition, export your BOM and ask your procurement team to do a risk analysis. This will give you a head start on urgent design revision requests. If you need a second set of eyes the PHYTEC team is happy to do an assessment as well.
Looking into 2026, it’s clear everyone is chasing a little security. Not just CRA compliance, but confidence in your development decisions as well. The truth is, the future is unpredictable, and the best way to design for it is to be prepared and flexible. That’s why in Q1 2026, PHYTEC is launching 5 SOMs under our phyFLEX brand, built with Future Proof Solder Core (FPSC) Technology to support second sourcing, scaling, and software compatibility. With 40 years of design, engineering, and manufacturing expertise behind it, phyFLEX helps you stay ahead of SoC roadmaps and navigate rapid technological change. You’ll get the full story on this new offering in 2026, but for now, let's see what our engineering teams recommend for the future:
Hardware Team: FPSC will help customers protect their designs and provide a clear upgrade path, improving processor performance without the need to redesign entire projects.
Software Team: Looking ahead, FPSC is shaping up to be a game-changer. Think of it as a dynamic industrial standard with long-term support. The kind of thing that makes future-proofing your projects much easier.
Production Test Team: Don't forget about Security requirements. The secure access requirements could mean you don't have access to boundary scan, serial console, or network so our recommendation is to talk about your key programming and software programming process early in the design process.
Sales Team: FPSC and the evolution of phyFLEX SOMs will give you scalable solutions for whatever your next project throws at you.
Support Team: As we plan for what’s next, CRA compliance (or similar standards) is going to be something every customer should consider. Start planning now, it’s much easier than scrambling at the last minute.
Supply Chain Team: You should plan for continued supply constraints and potential price increases through 2026 due to memory market constraints. The Supply Chain team at PHYTEC works tirelessly to keep customers supported despite these challenges and are committed to supporting long-term project success for the industrial market. Going into 2026 we recommend building a relationship with your Supply Chain, Procurement, and Purchasing teams as well as suppliers. Clear, open and constant communication will be key for material sourcing, design options and strategic part selections. PHYTEC does offer flexible SOM options that allow dual sourcing (at the component level) without a major software environment / toolset learning curve. On behalf of our customers, the PHYTEC team will continue to secure early allocations, advise on strategic part selections, and ensure clear communication so customers can confidently plan their projects well into the future. No matter what happens, we will have your back.
If you find yourself looking for security in 2026 you might find your answers here:
🔗 PHYTEC Lifecycle management and high quality assurance will keep you in production longer
🔗 Upcoming Webinar Feb 2026 with PHYTEC and NXP: Stay tuned for more information: The secure Way to a CRA-Compliant Product: Unlock Embedded Security from design to compliance
We had a feeling it would be the next big thing.
👉 Your phyCORE-AM67x development kit is waiting.