The Missing Link


What continues to fascinate me about the IoT opportunity is the explosion of creative ideas that are being imagined and developed to enable the next big thing. When I imagine the kind of connectivity and control that will need to happen between the Internet and ‘smart’ devices, these things obviously must be very inexpensive, super small, with the ability to harvest their own energy. ... » read more

We Are Getting Serious


This week we have our in-person Executive Committee meeting in beautiful Portland, Oregon. I know I’m biased but I really believe that Portland is worth a visit. It’s a very walkable city with some hidden gems downtown such as the Lan Su Chinese Garden, an oasis in our small but vibrant Chinatown, and Waterfront Park down by the Willamette River. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the we... » read more

Who Changes Us


Most of us have one of more people that had a huge impact on our life. For me one of those is my former husband, Klaus Cirkel. We met when we were still at university, RWTH Aachen, in western Germany. I was slowly making my way through the metallurgy curriculum. Well, Klaus was the total opposite. He was driven and his drive was infectious. He motivated me to expedite my degree then to take the... » read more

Week 14: To My Fellow Procrastinators


“The psychological principle is this: Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” — Robert Benchley, American humorist, 1930 Are you a procrastinator? For the record, I am. My creative juices flow much better when I’m under deadline. However my tendency to delay does have downside. Last weekend we had planned to go backpack... » read more

Week 13: Cruising The Deep Submicron


These cooler, shorter days can only mean one thing: It’s time to get in the last beautiful late summer, early autumn motorcycle rides. Surprised? Well, I ride a 2005 Harley Davidson Dyna Low Rider. I’m a picky rider who prefers the kind of perfect weather conditions that have prevailed in Oregon during the last few weekends. Here is a little clip from a recent tour around Crater Lake in sou... » read more

Following Real Money On The IoT


We probably need to change the wording, but the next killer apps for the Internet of Things likely will be ones that save lives. A common approach by vendors looking to capitalize on the IoT is simply to mash together different vertical segments and technologies that never went together in the past. A crowd-based real-time GPS/traffic system like Waze would never have existed a decade ago (... » read more

Supply Chain Corruption


The more the chip supply chain relies on third-party sources, the greater the risk for a design containing potential malicious code or functions. Today, complex and sophisticated ICs are ubiquitous in virtually every industry. They are being relied upon, as never before, to control critical infrastructure subsystems such as power, finance, communications, and transportation. In a recent r... » read more

IoT Growing Pains


The Internet of Things is having one of those defining moments — and not in a good way. Only a limited number of things will work together at first. Only in rare case will they actually cross boundaries between vertical markets such as consumer or home, automotive and medical. And in no cases will there be any guarantees, at least in the short term, that communications will be reliable, secur... » read more

The Simple Way To Steal Data


Given all the propaganda that is currently floating around about what the IoT/E, CoT is or isn’t, will or won’t be, one thing is for sure – it will be flooded with autonomous objects, most of which most will be cheap, simple, and, as it stands now, unsecured. And, given the equation that: a) side channel attacks are relatively easy, and b) that many of the chips of IoT/E, CoT objects a... » read more

Quantum Cryptography: A Magic Bullet For The IoT?


Quantum cryptography (QC for this discussion) theory—and it is still just theory—is potentially a very powerful security process that could be implemented for the dissemination of information over communications channels, using the principles of quantum mechanics. This is particularly intriguing because it is impossible to measure a photon, the fundamental element in the creation of QC secu... » read more

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