Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Renesas Electronics completed its acquisition of Panthronics, a fabless company specializing in near-field communication (NFC) wireless products. Renesas has already incorporated Panthronics NFC technology into several solution reference designs for applications such as payment, IoT, asset tracking, and smart meters. The European Commission announced new funding for the semiconductor and mic... » read more

A Methodology for Automatic eFPGA redaction


New academic paper titled "ALICE: An Automatic Design Flow for eFPGA Redaction" from researchers at Politecnico di Milano, New York University, University of Calgary, and the University of Utah. Abstract "Fabricating an integrated circuit is becoming unaffordable for many semiconductor design houses. Outsourcing the fabrication to a third-party foundry requires methods to protect the intell... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 14


Probabilistic computers Sandia National Laboratories and others are developing what researchers call a probabilistic computer. Instead of traditional computing, Sandia is developing a system with built-in randomness that computes information differently every time. As part the research program, the Department of Energy awarded the project $6 million over the next three years to develop t... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 29


Thermal lithography Using a technique called thermal scanning probe lithography, New York University (NYU) and others have reported a breakthrough in fabricating 2D semiconductors. With the technology, researchers have devised metal electrodes with vanishing Schottky barriers on 2D semiconductors based on molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂). Thermal scanning probe lithography, sometimes called t-... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer, is giving up on the smart home market. The company is putting its Iris Smart Home business up for sale as part of a reorganization. The retailer made a big splash at CES 2015 with its Innovation Lab offerings, which included retail service robots and the Holoroom “home improvement simulator.” The Iris product line includes multipl... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 12


Sunny days slow 5G 5G networks promise a world of fast wireless data speeds and connected everything.  However, researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and King Saud University found that hot, sunny weather could degrade 5G cellular transmissions by more than 15%. The researchers focused on how solar radio emissions would affect the unlicensed 60 GHz bands, part of the millimet... » read more

Emerging Security Protocols


As the proliferation of mobile devices ramps up at escalating rates, securing these devices and the infrastructure they run on is becoming a top priority for both the hardware and the data that swirls within it. Traditional security platforms such as firewalls and antivirus programs are still a viable part of the security envelope, but the rapid emergence of zero-day/hour threats is somethin... » read more

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