Developing Effective Design Strategies For Today’s Wearable Devices


While many new fitness bands, smartwatches, and other wearable devices have entered the market, most have under-whelmed prospects and users. It is quite clear the wearable industry is in its infancy and fraught with growing pains. Software developers, embedded systems architects and engineers must take heed in the early miscalculations of these devices (whether it’s functionality, utility, pr... » read more

Executive Insight: Charlie Cheng


Charlie Cheng, CEO of Kilopass, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about issues with current memory types and why the market is ready for disruptive approaches to reduce power and cost. SE: What's changing in the memory space? Cheng: Memory is a very important building block. It's a foundation and a commodity for a chip and for the system, but if you look at the big picture, ... » read more

Tech Talk: Sensor Design


NXP's Wouter Sijm talks about sensor design in the IoT age, where engineers can go astray, and why the IoT is a more complex environment for sensors than previous devices. [youtube vid=7fqEatgvZnE] » read more

Five Questions: Jeff Bier


Jeff Bier, founder and president of BDTI, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the creation of the Embedded Vision Alliance and the proliferation of neural network technology into embedded systems. SE: Why was the Embedded Vision Alliance formed? Bier: About 5 years ago, computer vision was on the verge of becoming a world changing technology. It was becoming possible, for t... » read more

Nymi: Wearable Authentication


If you had one device that could log into all your electronics automatically, allowing you to make electronic payments more securely based on your heart beat rhythms, would you use it? That's the question a startup named Nymi is asking—and a lot of other companies are watching. The company began its life in 2011 using a biometric electrocardiogram developed at the University of Toronto. ... » read more

System Bits: Aug. 4


Turning electric signals into light signals Transmitting large amounts of data, such as those needed to keep the internet running, requires high-performance modulators that turn electric signals into light signals, and now, researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a modulator they say is a hundred times smaller than conventional models. They reminded that in 1880, Alexander Graham Bell deve... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 30


Tiny, solar-powered sensors Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it, even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous ultralow-power converters that used the same approach had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent. ... » read more

Dedicated ASIC Design Is Now Cost-Effective


Current market and technology trends have increased the demand for mixed-signal ASICs. Smaller projects with modest design budgets are viable due to low cost design tools and easy access to flexible, mature IC processes. This is especially compelling for developing mixed-signal ASICs for cost-sensitive sensor applications for the Internet of things (IoT). This paper discusses how costs and risk... » read more

Japan: Finding Leadership In New Technology Areas


By Osamu Nakamura The semiconductor industry is a technology-driven industry — and technology invention and innovation are the engines that drive industry growth. Japan has seen the global landscape for semiconductor manufacturing change, and in turn, Japan’s semiconductor industry has been changing, finding technology leadership opportunities in emerging technology areas that lead to grow... » read more

Blog Review: June 3


An emergency torch that lets you breathe while escaping a smoke-filled building; a car that shrinks to fit into parking spaces that aren't quite big enough: from extreme situations to everyday activities, Ansys' Justin Nescott features devices designed to make life easier and safer in his picks for week’s top five engineering articles. Check out the prosthetic foot that takes commands from se... » read more

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