Silicon Labs’ system-on-chip and power management ICs are being integrated into what the company claims is the first native Matter-over-Thread form factor in Nuki’s fourth generation smart locks and U-tec’s smart deadbolt locks.
Austrian smart home vendor Nuki’s smart lock adds capabilities to European-style doorknobs and U-tec is using the Silicon Labs solutions for its Ultraloq bolt fingerprint device, a biometric smart deadbolt lock with Matter-over-Thread.
"The companies leading IoT industry trends and setting the curve with Matter capabilities are coming to Silicon Labs for our Matter expertise," said Jacob Alamat, senior vice president for the Home and Life Business Unit at Silicon Labs. "As the largest code contributor to Matter of any semiconductor company, Silicon Labs has extensive expertise in the field, enabling our array of industry-leading Matter SoCs and modules and empowering strong, cutting-edge partnerships."
Nuki is also using the battery-powered Bluetooth products and Silicon Labs’ WF200 Wi-Fi transceiver for its internet of things Wi-Fi applications for RF performance. The company plans to bring the smart locks to the U.S. later this year.
The Matter standard was first introduced in early 2022 by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) to unify smart home devices under a universal protocol. The idea was to take all smart home devices — regardless of manufacturer — and allow control via one hub or smartphone app. That means devices from Google, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Comcast or any other company will work together for the first time.
Matter-over-Thread will allow the Matter standard to use a language to talk to all the smart devices in the home with Thread being the mode of communications they use to communicate.