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The Week in Review: IoT


Products/Services NXP Semiconductors is partnering with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing business unit of Alibaba Group, to develop secure smart devices for edge computing. The companies will also work together on Internet of Things offerings. AliOS, the Alibaba IoT operating system, has been integrated with NXP’s application processors, microcontrollers, and Layerscape multicore processor... » read more

Fan-Outs vs. TSVs


Two years ago, at the annual IMAPS conference on 2.5D and 3D chip packaging, the presentations were dominated by talk of fan-out wafer-level packaging. There was almost no talk of through-silicon vias, which previously had been heralded as vital to 2.5D and 3DIC packaging. Fast forward to this month's 3D Architectures for Heterogeneous Integration and Packaging conference in Burlingame, Cali... » read more

Changes Ahead For Test


Testing microprocessors is becoming more difficult and more time consuming as these devices are designed to take on more complex tasks, such as accelerating artificial intelligence computing, enabling automated driving, and supporting deep neural networks. This is not just limited to microprocessors, either. Graphics processing units are grabbing market share in supercomputing and other area... » read more

That Was The Year That Was In Test


Looking back on the year about to end, one deal stands out, because it is in legal limbo – the proposed $580 million acquisition of Xcerra by Hubei Xinyan Equity Investment Partnership. At this writing, the transaction has not been completed. Both parties said they planned to sew up the purchase by the end of 2017, so a few weeks remain to make that happen. The deal is in the hands of t... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Products/Services Vancouver, B.C.-based Riot Micro has brought out the RM1000 baseband modem chip for the cellular Internet of Things. The device is said to use Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi techniques to provide low-power and lower-cost connectivity, like short-range wireless systems. The chip is being marketed to module manufacturers and OEMs developing narrowband IoT and LTE-M products for... » read more

IoT’s Many Different Forms


The Internet of Things is settling into widespread industrial applications, along with precision agriculture, while consumer IoT continues to find its way into the home through smart speakers and their digital assistants, such as Amazon Echo, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home. The Internet of Cows and the Internet of Tomatoes may sound like fanciful subjects, yet there is serious technology in ... » read more

State Of The IoT


The Internet of Things represents many things to many people, and many of them are not good. For some it is either a laughingstock or a punching bag. For IT, it is a subject of derision because securing all connected devices at the edge is a nightmare. But in all cases, the general consensus is that the IoT has failed to live up to expectations and a level of hype not seen since the dot-com ... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Products/Services At this week’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Amazon Web Services introduced a number of products and services for the Internet of Things, machine learning, and other areas. These include Amazon FreeRTOS (an operating system for IoT microcontrollers), AWS IoT Device Defender (security management), AWS IoT 1-Click, AWS IoT Device Management, AWS IoT Analytics... » read more

Different Approaches To Security


Everyone acknowledges the necessity for cybersecurity precautions, yet the world continues to be challenged by an invisible, inventive army of hackers. The massive data breach at Equifax was only the latest in a series of successful cyberattacks on the credit monitoring firm. Lessons learned from the previous breaches apparently didn’t mitigate this year’s embarrassment for the company. ... » read more

The New Road Warriors


Chip vendors and other companies that have little or no experience in automotive are flooding into this market as the race for assisted and autonomous driving begins to heat up. This market is expected to pay big dividends for companies that succeed in helping to build the vehicles of the future in this century. IC Insights earlier this year forecast the auto chip market would grow 22% this ... » read more

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