Who Designs Medical ICs


The medical chip market is heating up as sensor and processing technologies reach maturity, seeing off a frenzy of activity by systems companies and startups looking to plant a stake in a vast and largely untapped arena. As with any industry, there are a variety of business models, which can spread out the design burden over many companies or just one large one. This was limited in the past ... » 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

Securing Connected Medical Devices For FDA Submissions


The benefits and challenges of the Internet of Things (IoT) are especially evident in healthcare, thanks to increases in the volume and use of medical devices. Network-connected devices have greatly improved patient care by helping healthcare providers monitor vital signs, regulate medication dosages, improve diagnostics, and ultimately improve patient outcomes while lowering costs. This whi... » 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

Overview Of Medical Chip Challenges


Medical devices are adopting, and increasingly adapting, a variety of semiconductor technologies to provide new functions and capabilities in smaller form factors. In doing so, they are leveraging increasing processing capabilities, lower power, and new types of sensors to propel health care forward. Many different chip types have been used in medical devices for years, many of them develope... » read more

One-On-One: Lip-Bu Tan


Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the impact of massive increases in data across a variety of industries, the growing need for computational software, and the potential implications of U.S.-China relations. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What do you see as the biggest change for the chip industry? Tan: We're in our fifth g... » read more

Synthetic Aperture And Plane Wave Ultrasound Imaging With Versal ACAP


Medical ultrasound is the most widely accepted and available form of diagnostic imaging today because of many significant advantages. It uses low-energy acoustic waves, and there are no known harmful side-effects on patients unlike potential ionizing radiation from X-rays or CT scans. Ultrasound can capture dynamic soft issue images, which X-rays cannot. Ultrasound systems are compact and trans... » read more

CEO Outlook: 2021


The new year will be one of significant transition and innovation for the chip industry, but there are so many new applications and market segments that broad generalizations are becoming less meaningful. Unlike in years past, where sales of computers or smart phones were a good indication of how the chip industry would fare, end markets have both multiplied and splintered, greatly increasin... » read more

2020: A Turning Point In The Chip Industry


At the start of 2020, most of the industry was upbeat and sales forecasts for the year were good. Then the pandemic hit, and fear gripped most of the industry — but not for long. New markets emerged, demand increased, and the levels of innovation went far beyond what had been forecast. While hope is on the horizon that the virus will be contained during 2021, life will not return to the ol... » read more

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