Announcing Zephyr 4.1.0

[kartben]

We are pleased to announce the release of Zephyr 4.1.0!

For a detailed overview of some of the highlights of this release, you may check out the dedicated article that was posted on the Zephyr blog, and its accompanying video.

Major enhancements with this release include:

🚀 Performance improvements

Multiple performance improvements of core Zephyr kernel functions have been implemented, benefiting all supported hardware architectures.
An official port of the thread_metric RTOS benchmark has also been added to make it easier for developers to measure the performance of Zephyr on their hardware and compare it to other RTOSes.

🛠️ Experimental support for IAR compiler

IAR Arm Toolchain can now be used to build Zephyr applications. This is an experimental feature that is expected to be improved in future releases.

🦀 Initial support for Rust on Zephyr

It is now possible to write Zephyr applications in Rust. Rust Language Support is available through an optional Zephyr module, and several code samples are available as a starting point.

🎹 USB MIDI Class Driver

Introduction of a new USB MIDI 2.0 device driver, allowing Zephyr devices to communicate with MIDI controllers and instruments over USB.

✨ Expanded Board Support

Support for 70 new boards and 11 new shields has been added in this release.
This includes highly popular boards such as Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and WCH CH32V003EVT, several boards with CAN+USB capabilities making them good candidates for running the Zephyr-based open source CANnectivity firmware, and dozens of other boards across all supported architectures.

The full release notes and list of major changes since the last release can be found here: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/releases/release-notes-4.1.html

An overview of the changes required or recommended when migrating your application from Zephyr v4.0.0 to Zephyr v4.1.0 can be found in the migration guide:https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/releases/migration-guide-4.1.html

This 4.1 release will be supported until November 14th, 2025.

Many thanks to the 678(!) individuals who contributed to this release! 🚀
Benjamin and Fabio.