Author's Latest Posts


Testing Against Changing Standards In Automotive


The infusion of more semiconductor content into cars is raising the bar on reliability and changing the way chips are designed, verified and tested, but it also is raising a lot of questions about whether companies are on the right track at any point in time. Concerns about liability are rampant with autonomous and assisted driving, so standards are being rolled out well in advance of the te... » read more

The Limits Of Energy Harvesting


Energy harvesting, once considered an inexpensive alternative to low-power design and a way of achieving nearly unlimited power in mobile devices, has settled down to more modest expectations. This approach to generating energy through a variety of means—from solar to motion to ambient RF and even pH differences between soil and trees—has been proven to work. The problem is that it doesn... » read more

IoT Merging Into Data-Driven Design


The Internet of Things is becoming more difficult to define and utilize for an effective business strategy. While an increasing number devices send data to the cloud or some local server, so much data is being generated and moved around that new strategies are being developed to rethink what needs to be processed where. Back in 2013, when the IoT concept really began taking off, connectivity... » read more

Are Devices Getting More Secure?


Adding security into chip design is becoming more prevalent as more devices are connected to the Internet, but it's not clear whether that is enough to offset an explosion in connected "things." Security concerns have been growing for the past half-decade, starting with a rash of high-profile attacks on retail establishments, hotel membership clubs, and Equifax, one of the three top credit-c... » read more