6G Rollout Will Be A Patchwork At First


6G is expected to begin rolling out in 2030, but advances in 5G will inch cellular technology close enough that it will make the first 6G implementations seem more like just another upgrade. That's just the starting point, though. 6G technology gets much more interesting from there, connecting more devices at a significantly higher data rate, and enabling services that would be unattractive to ... » read more

How Secure Are Analog Circuits?


The move toward multi-die assemblies and the increasing value of sensor data at the edge are beginning to focus attention and raise questions about security in analog circuits. In most SoC designs today, security is almost entirely a digital concern. Security requirements in digital circuits are well understood, particularly in large data centers and at the upper end of edge computing, which... » read more

Mobile Chip Challenges In The AI Era


Leading smart phone vendors are struggling to keep pace with the rising compute and power demands of localized generative AI, standard phone functions, and the need to move more data back and forth between handsets and the cloud. In addition to edge functions, such as facial recognition and other on-device apps, phones must accommodate a continuous stream of new communications protocols, and... » read more

AR/VR Glasses Taking Shape With New Chips


More augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) wearables are coming, but how they are connected, and where image and other data is processed, are still in flux. Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, for example, look like classic eyeglasses, but they rely on a tethered smart phone for such functions as taking pictures, AI voice assistance, and object identification. In contrast... » read more

Security Risks Mount For Aerospace, Defense Applications


Supply chain and hardware security vulnerabilities affect all industries, but they pose additional risks for the defense sector. Over-manufacturing and re-manufacturing allow chips from friendly nations to end up in the weapons of adversaries. And side-channel attacks such as power analysis or fault injection, as well as internet-based distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, provide a mea... » read more

Radiation, Temperature, Power Challenges For Chips In Space


Mission-critical hardware used in space is not supposed to fail at all, because lives may be lost in addition to resources, availability, performance, and budgets. For space applications, failure can occur due to a range of factors, including the weather on the day of launch, human error, environmental conditions, unexpected or unknown hazards and degradation of parts to chemical factors, aging... » read more

Extra Safety Measures Needed For Aerospace ICs


Aerospace safety requirements and standards vary depending on whether a spacecraft is manned or unmanned, and how crucial the mission is. The defense contractors designing these spacecraft take various approaches to functional safety based on how critical a component is for the mission to succeed. While losing a few images during an Earth-bound observation may not matter, losing a satellite ... » read more

Cyber Threats Multiply With Commercial Chiplets


The commercialization of chiplets will significantly boost the potential for attacks on hardware, requiring a much broader set of security measures and processes at every level of the supply chain, including traceability from initial design to end of life. Much progress has been made in recent years on security measures, including everything from identifying unusual data traffic inside a chi... » read more

Smarter Cars, Higher Stakes


Artificial intelligence is turbocharging automotive innovation, but it's also unleashing a tangle of high stakes risks that engineers and security experts are scrambling to contain. The push to embed AI deep into today’s vehicles is changing how cars are built, how they handle the road, and how they keep passengers safe. But as onboard intelligence expands, so do the risks. AI systems that... » read more

Security Power Requirements Are Growing


Determining how much power to budget for security in a chip design is a complex calculation. It starts with a risk assessment of the cost of a breach and the number of possible attack vectors, and whether security is active or passive. Different forms of root of trust and cryptography have different power costs. Different systems could require tradeoffs between performance and security, whic... » read more

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