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Ed Sperling

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Ed Sperling is the editor in chief of Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Data Leakage And The IIoT
By Ed Sperling - 22 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 1

The Internet of Things has raised concerns about people hacking into home networks or using armies of bots to disrupt communications. But with the Industrial IoT, the stakes are significantly higher—and the effects can last much longer. Security tops the list of concerns as more industrial equipment is connected to the Internet, according to numerous industry insiders. That hasn't stopped ... » read more

Playing With Chip Volumes
By Ed Sperling - 16 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

The overall market for semiconductors continues to grow, but the number of applications that will generate enormous volumes continues to shrink. In theory, this is good for the overall semiconductor industry, but it raises important questions about where R&D dollars will go in the future. The fundamental problem is that the semiconductor business is a volume business for one or two markets. ... » read more

Intel To Buy Mobileye
By Ed Sperling - 13 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 2

Intel today said it would acquire embedded vision leader Mobileye for roughly $15.3 billion in equity—$14.7 billion in "enterprise value"—setting the stage for a huge push by the chipmaker into the autonomous driving market. Intel has been dabbling in the automotive market for some time, starting with an unsuccessful bid to replace 8-bit microcontrollers with low-end processors. With the... » read more

MEMS: Improving Cost And Yield
By Ed Sperling - 13 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 2

MEMS devices inspire awe on the design side. On the test and manufacturing side, they evoke a different kind of reaction. These are, after all, the intersection of mechanical and electrical engineering—a joining of two miniature worlds that are the basis of some of the most complex technology on the planet. But getting these devices to yield sufficiently, understanding what does or does no... » read more

Tech Talk: Ethernet
By Ed Sperling - 13 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

George Hervey, principal architect at Marvell, talks about the power efficiency of networking in the enterprise and how much money can be saved by rightsizing Ethernet equipment. [youtube vid=PxDR94UOFaM]     Related Stories Executive Insight: Sehat Sutardja Marvell’s CEO talks about the rising cost of design and why new packaging approaches are essential. » read more

Power, Performance And Electronic Surveillance
By Ed Sperling - 09 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

The disclosure that smart TVs can be used as for surveillance purposes is hardly a revelation. Makers of these devices have been advertising gesture recognition features for several years. Far from being evil, TV makers were responding to market research that showed voice inputs were a good way to boost sales in a saturated digital TV market. They added cameras so buyers could wave their han... » read more

Worst-Case Results Causing Problems
By Ed Sperling - 09 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

The ability of design tools to identify worst-case scenarios has allowed many chipmakers to flag potential issues well ahead of tapeout, but as process geometries shrink that approach is beginning to create its own set of issues. This is particularly true at 16/14nm and below, where extra circuitry can slow performance, boost the amount of power required to drive signals over longer, thinne... » read more

Testing For Security
By Ed Sperling - 06 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

Ever since the IoT became a household name, people have been strategizing about ways to utilize non-secure devices to mount an attack. The first instances of using electricity to overload a device's circuits, thereby neutralizing existing security features, came to light in some of the earliest car hacking incidents. These are basically side-channel attacks using what amounts to an electroni... » read more

Quality Issues Widen
By Ed Sperling - 06 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

As the amount of semiconductor content in cars, medical and industrial applications increases, so does the concern about how long these devices will function properly—and what exactly that means. Quality is frequently a fuzzy concept. In mobile phones, problems have ranged from bad antenna placement, which resulted in batteries draining too quickly, to features that take too long to load. ... » read more

Internet Security? Not Even Close
By Ed Sperling - 02 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

This week's outage at Amazon Web Services is yet another reminder that Internet security is still not quite there. Amazon isn't a second-tier cloud services provider. It's one of the biggest cloud companies on the planet. If Amazon can't get it right, it's hard to imagine anyone can. The company's Simple Storage Service, aka S3, was the target, and it took about five hours before this online... » read more

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