Why RISC-V Is Succeeding


There is no disputing the excitement surround the introduction of the RISC-V processor architecture. Yet while many have called it a harbinger of a much broader open-source hardware movement, the reasons behind its success are not obvious, and the implications for an expansion of more open-source cores is far from certain. “The adoption of RISC-V as the preferred architecture for many sili... » read more

ML Focus Shifting Toward Software


New machine-learning (ML) architectures continue to garner a huge amount of attention as the race continues to provide the most effective acceleration architectures for the cloud and the edge, but attention is starting to shift from the hardware to the software tools. The big question now is whether a software abstraction eventually will win out over hardware details in determining who the f... » read more

Why It’s So Difficult — And Costly — To Secure Chips


Rising concerns about the security of chips used in everything from cars to data centers are driving up the cost and complexity of electronic systems in a variety of ways, some obvious and others less so. Until very recently, semiconductor security was viewed more as a theoretical threat than a real one. Governments certainly worried about adversaries taking control of secure systems through... » read more

Will Markets For ML Models Materialize?


Developers are spending increasing amounts of time and effort in creating machine-learning (ML) models for use in a wide variety of applications. While this will continue as the market matures, at some point some of these efforts might be seen as reinventing models over and over. Will developers of successful models ever have a marketplace in which they can sell those models as IP to other d... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive The U.S. Congress passed an infrastructure bill that includes mandates for the U.S. automobiles to install technology in new vehicles that will stop impaired drivers from driving a vehicle. Sec. 24220, the advanced impaired driving technology section of the bill says the Secretary of Transportation is responsible for coming up with standards after which the auto industry has at the ... » read more

Complex Chips Make Security More Difficult


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

Improving Medical Image Processing With AI


Machine learning is being integrated with medical image processing, one of the most useful technologies for medical diagnosis and surgery, greatly expanding the amount of useful information that can be gleaned from scan or MRI. For the most part, ML is being used to augment manual processes that medical personnel use today. While the goal is to automate many of these functions, it's not clea... » read more

Rising Fortunes For ICs In Health Care


Semiconductors are increasingly finding their way into a variety of medical devices, after years of slow growth and largely consumer electronics types of applications. Nearly every major chipmaker has a toehold in health care these days, and many are starting to look beyond wearable such as the Apple Watch to devices that can be relied on for accuracy and reliability. Unlike in the past, the... » read more

Competing Auto Sensor Fusion Approaches


As today’s internal-combustion engines are replaced by electric/electronic vehicles, mechanical-system sensors will be supplanted by numerous electronic sensors both for efficient operation and for achieving various levels of autonomy. Some of these new sensors will operate alone, but many prominent ones will need their outputs combined — or “fused” — with the outputs of other sensor... » read more

Security Risks Grow With 5G


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

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