IC Industry Waking Up To Security


By Jeff Dorsch & Ed Sperling Many people pay lip service to the concept of security in Internet of Things devices, software, and networks. That oversight is beginning to fade away, however, as companies begin digging into one of the broadest and most complex problems in the IoT age. Unlike other technology issues, which have been solved in increments, security is all-inclusive. While ... » read more

Lawyers, Insurance And Self-Driving Cars


Self-driving cars are drawing semiconductor companies into legal and regulatory issues for the first time, adding a new level of scrutiny on cutting-edge chip technology. It also opens up a whole new field for legal interpretation, case law, and regulation. While most liability cases in the past never crossed below the system vendor/supplier level, that could change with autonomous vehic... » read more

IoT Designs Evolving


IoT hardware is beginning to take shape across a variety of vertical markets, and devices are looking far different from the initial concepts. They're smarter, more targeted, and in most cases custom-built for specific applications. The concept of connected things is hardly a new one. Students at Carnegie Mellon University added sensors into a vending machine in the early 1980s to remotely m... » read more

Grappling With IoT Security


By Ed Sperling & Ernest Worthman As the IoT begins to take shape, the security implications of connecting devices and systems to the Internet and what needs to be done to secure them are coming into focus, as well. There is growing consensus across the semiconductor industry that many potential security holes remain, with new ones surfacing all the time. But there also is widespread r... » read more

Autonomous Vehicle Disruptions Ahead


The promise of autonomous driving is a significant one, with far fewer fatalities from vehicle crashes — down from 30,000 annually — topping the list of benefits. Beyond that, autonomous driving also promises increased convenience and productivity and less troublesome commutes. But autonomous driving also pushes automotive technology into uncharted areas. There is little to fall back on ... » read more

Virtualization Revisited


Virtual instruction set computing (VISC) is getting a second look as power and performance improvements begin to slow and [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] is supplanted by [getkc id="279" comment="Koomey's Law"]. While the current crop of [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFETs"] will likely be extended for at least one more process node, there is some debate about what comes next, whether tha... » read more

Rethinking Processor Architectures


The semiconductor industry's obsession with clock speeds, cores and how many transistors fit on a piece of silicon may be nearing an end for real this time. The [getentity id="22048" comment="IEEE"] said it will develop the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS), effectively setting the industry agenda for future silicon benchmarking and adding metrics that are relevant to specifi... » read more

Next-Gen Botnets


Botnets, once limited to computer networks, are expanding and changing as more devices are connected to the Internet—and becoming much harder to detect and destroy. The term botnet—a contraction for robotic networks—conjures up the days when it was just a collection of computers that were largely autonomous, on a local network and usually assigned to repetitive tasks. But that is chang... » read more

Unexpected Security Holes


Security is emerging as one of the top challenges in semiconductor design across a variety of markets, with the number of security holes growing by orders of magnitude in sectors that have never dealt with these kinds of design constraints before. While security has been a topic of conversation for years in mobile phones and data centers, commercial and industrial equipment is being connecte... » read more

Using Chip Technology To Detect And Prevent Diseases


The overlap between semiconductor technology and medicine is growing, creating the same kinds of economies of scale that have fueled the semiconductor industry for the past five decades. While technology has long held a place in the medical world, the idea that chips can save lives and improve health is a relatively new concept. That effort is gaining steam, too, as more capabilities are add... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →