John Koon

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John Koon is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Health Care Is Gold Mine For Hackers
By John Koon - 24 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

Today’s digital health care systems are facing relentless cyberattacks, which are targeting health care organizations as well as the medical devices they use. The critical nature and size of the U.S. health care market — an estimated $3.5 trillion in 2020, with substantial growth anticipated — make it a favorite target of hackers. Vanson Bourne conducted a survey for Sophos in early 20... » read more

Manufacturing Shifts To AI Of Things
By John Koon - 06 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

AI is being infused into the Internet of Things, setting the stage for significant improvements in manufacturing productivity, improved uptime, and reduced costs — regardless of market segment. The traditional approach to improving manufacturing equipment reliability and efficiency is regular scheduled maintenance. While that is an improvement over just fixing or replacing equipment when i... » read more

Securing Short-Range Communications
By John Koon - 15 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

Short-range wireless communication technology is in widespread use and growing rapidly, adding conveniences for consumers while also opening the door to a whole range of cyberattacks. This technology is common across a variety of applications, from wireless key fobs to unlock a car and start the ignition, to tags used to help drivers find misplaced items such as car keys. RFID also is starti... » read more

Innovations In Sensor Technology
By John Koon - 09 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

Sensors are the “eyes” and “ears” of processors, co-processors, and computing modules. They come in all shapes, forms, and functions, and they are being deployed in a rapidly growing number of applications — from edge computing and IoT, to smart cities, smart manufacturing, hospitals, industrial, machine learning, and automotive. Each of these use cases relies on chips to capture d... » read more

Improving Power Efficiency In Ultra-Low Power Designs
By John Koon - 11 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 0

Faster data communications in phones and data centers grabs headlines, but many applications don't require the continuous, high-data-rate communications needed for video streaming or image processing. In fact, for many devices, designing for better performance results in wasted energy and sharply curtails the time between battery charges. That is especially true for machine-to-machine (M2M) ... » read more

Complex Chips Make Security More Difficult
By John Koon - 04 Nov, 2021 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor supply chain management is becoming more complex with many more moving parts as chips become increasingly disaggregated, making it difficult to ensure where parts originated and whether they have been compromised before they are added into advanced chips or packages. In the past, supply chain concerns largely focused primarily on counterfeit parts or gray-market substitutions u... » read more

Security Risks Grow With 5G
By John Koon - 07 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

5G mobile phones can download a movie in seconds rather than minutes, but whether that can be done securely remains to be seen. What is clear from technology providers, though, is they are taking security very seriously with this new wireless technology. More data is in motion, and the value of that data is growing as users rely on mobile devices for everything from banking to automotive saf... » read more

Grappling With Smart City Security Issues
By John Koon - 02 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 0

Security concerns are rising as cities seek to modernize services by connecting them to the internet and to each other, creating a widening attack surface that is a potential target for everything from disruption of services to ransomware demands. The goal of smart cities is to apply technology and intelligence to a variety of services to enable independent operation, real-time response, as ... » read more

The Good And Bad Of Auto IC Updates
By John Koon - 03 Jun, 2021 - Comments: 0

Keeping automobiles updated enough to avoid problems is becoming increasingly difficult as more complex electronics are added into vehicles, and as the lifetimes of those devices are extended to a decade or more. Modern vehicles are full of electronics. In fact, the value of electronic devices used in modern vehicles is expected to double in the next 10 years, growing to $469 billion by 2030... » read more

Security Concerns Rise For Connected Autos
By John Koon - 29 Apr, 2021 - Comments: 0

The auto industry is transforming itself toward a future in which the automobile increasingly will be connected using V2X and 5G. Driver assistance will improve, and ultimately cars will be guided by AI and machine learning. But all of this will be closely watched by hackers, looking for an opening and a potentially large and untraceable payout. The replacement of mechanical functionality wi... » read more

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