Ensuring Your Semiconductor Test Equipment Is Protected From Rising Cybersecurity Threats


Cybersecurity threats pose risks to your business every day and can attack every aspect of your operation, and these threats are only increasing. According to IBM Security’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, in 2021, the average total cost of a data breach increased by nearly 10% year over year, from $3.86M to $4.24M – the largest single year cost increase in the last seven years. Sourc... » read more

Industry Pushes For Fab Tool Security Standards


The semiconductor industry is developing new cybersecurity standards for fab equipment in an effort to protect systems from potential cyberattacks, viruses, and IP theft. Two new standards are in the works, which are being formulated under the auspices of the SEMI trade group with leadership from chipmakers and others. Led by Intel and Cimetrix, the first standard deals with malware-free equ... » read more

Bricked IoT Devices Are Casualties Of Lax Semiconductor Security


Earlier this summer, a new strain of destructive malware known as Silex began to spread and effectively brick unprotected IoT devices. Although victims of Silex theoretically can resurrect their IoT devices by manually reinstalling factory firmware, most remain wary of an installation process that is often time consuming and complicated. Moreover, many victims assume their device has suffered a... » read more

Cost-Effective, Silicon-Based Security Reduces Risks, Achieves Competitive Advantage


IDC Spotlight, by Robert Westervelt, Research Director, Security Products, sponsored by Rambus. Device manufacturers are increasingly under pressure to address security and privacy. Cost-effective, silicon-based security is among the components that can significantly reduce the risk of physical attacks and cyberattacks and achieve a competitive advantage over both legacy and insecure solutio... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Autos


Products/Services Huawei Technologies is again delaying the public introduction of its Mate X foldable smartphone. It is unlikely the product will be marketed in the U.S., given the ongoing trade war. The official rollout now seems likely to come in November, in time for the holiday shopping season. Samsung Electronics has had its problems with foldable phones, yet those were due to manufactur... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Autos


Products/Services Synopsys agreed to acquire QTronic, a German company specializing in simulation, test tools, and services for automotive software and systems development. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of the company’s 2019 fiscal year. “The terms of the deal, which is not material to Synopsys financials, are not being disclosed,” Synopsys said in a statemen... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Products/Services Rambus agreed to acquire Hillsboro, Ore.-based Northwest Logic, a purveyor of memory, PCIe, and MIPI digital controllers. The transaction is expected to close in the current quarter. Financial terms weren’t disclosed; Rambus said in a statement, “Although this transaction will not materially impact 2019 results due to the expected timing of close and acquisition accountin... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Products/Services Arteris IP reports that Bitmain licensed the Arteris Ncore Cache Coherent Interconnect intellectual property for use in its next-generation Sophon Tensor Processing Unit system-on-a-chip devices for the scalable hardware acceleration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. “Our choice of interconnect IP became more important as we continued to increase t... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things The Wing unit of Alphabet this summer will begin making drone deliveries in the Vuosarri district of Helsinki, Finland. The unmanned aerial vehicles will bear food and other items from Herkku Food, a gourmet market, and the Café Monami restaurant. The drones will bear deliveries of up to 3.3 pounds over distances of up to 6.2 miles. Comcast is reportedly developing an in... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: May 14


Detecting malware with power monitoring Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin and North Carolina State University devised a way to detect malware in large-scale embedded computer systems by monitoring power usage and identifying unusual surges as a warning of potential infection. The method relies on an external piece of hardware that can be plugged into the system to observe and m... » read more

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