Articles – EEJournal

Say what? When it Comes to Voice Control, The Future is Now!

January 14, 2021

When I was a little lad about six years old growing up in England circa 1963, my mom and dad were both working, so I used to spend the halcyon days of summer up the road at my Auntie Barbara’s house hanging out with my cousin Gillian (who was one year younger than me) and the other kids on the street.

You have to remember that our homes were small by American standards (“three-up, three-down, semi-detached,” which they call a duplex in the USA), with correspondingly sized furniture and appliances. … Read More → "Say what? When it Comes to Voice Control, The Future is Now!"

Say Goodbye to More Cloud Services

The Hits to Our Products Just Keep on Coming

by Jim Turley

January 13, 2021

With all the turmoil in the world, it’s nice to know that we can rely on our connected cloud-based devices. Oh, wait. No, we can’t. They’re about as reliable as fifth-hand ’50s Fiat.

Cloud behemoth Google went down last month, stranding thousands upon thousands of users around the globe who rely on Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Hangouts, Analytics, Google Maps, Blogger, and nearly everything else Google owns (which is to say, nearly everything). It was like losing electricity or running water if you were a G-Suite (sorry, … Read More → "Say Goodbye to More Cloud Services"

Hacking a Secure Air-Gapped Computer

Research Team Finds Novel Ways to Bypass Security

by Jim Turley

January 11, 2021

Some security weaknesses would be hilarious if they weren’t so serious. And one man and his crack research team have found dozens of surprising ways to crack seemingly impenetrable computers. You’ve got to give them points for originality.

There are a lot of ways to secure a computer, depending on what you’re trying to prevent. Do you want to keep secure information inside? Do you want to prevent outside malware from getting in? Do you want to limit access to only the right people? The list goes … Read More → "Hacking a Secure Air-Gapped Computer"

An AI Storm is Coming as Analog AI Surfaces in Sensors

by Max Maxfield

January 7, 2021

I worry that when writing these columns, I sometimes start by meandering my way off into the weeds, cogitating and ruminating on “this and that” before eventually bringing the story back home. So, on the basis that “a change is as good as a rest,” as the old English proverb goes, let’s do things a little differently this time.

Take a look at the image below. What do you see in addition to the penny piece? What I see is a Read More → "An AI Storm is Coming as Analog AI Surfaces in Sensors"

Neuromorphic Revolution

Will Neuromorphic Architectures Replace Moore’s Law?

by Kevin Morris

January 6, 2021

According to tech folklore, Carver Mead actually coined the term “Moore’s Law” – some ten years or so after the publication of Gordon Moore’s landmark 1965 Electronics Magazine article “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits.” For the next five and a half decades, the world was reshaped by the self-fulfilling prophecy outlined in that article. Namely, that every two years or so, semiconductor companies would be able to double the number of transistors that could be fabricated on a single semiconductor chip.

That biennial doubling of transistors led most noticeably … Read More → "Neuromorphic Revolution"

Security Flaw Afflicts Intel x86 Boot ROMs

CVE-2020-8705 Undermines Intel’s Boot Guard Security

by Jim Turley

January 4, 2021

Another year, another Intel bug.

What makes this bug interesting is that it’s so crafty. It’s fun to see what loopholes hardware and software can discover all by themselves. If you’re a homeowner, you know that water is amazingly devious. It can intrude anywhere, including moving uphill, through tiny holes, and along porous surfaces. Stopping leaks – or finding bugs – feels like a never-ending chore.

In this case, an Intel bug fix introduced a new bug. Ironic? Sure, but, to be fair, … Read More → "Security Flaw Afflicts Intel x86 Boot ROMs"

Decapitating Malware with Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) Technology

by Max Maxfield

December 31, 2020

As you may imagine, I receive an eye-watering number of emails each and every day. To give you an idea as to the size of the problem: as I pen these words, this is my first day back at work following a four-day break for the Christmas Holiday weekend. I got up at 6:00 a.m. this morning and came straight to my office. I ate lunch at my desk. It turned 3:30 p.m. a few minutes ago. I’ve only now finished wading through the emails that came in over the weekend and just now started writing this column.</ … Read More → "Decapitating Malware with Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) Technology"

Contractually Obligated Year-End Article

Evidence That 2020 Wasn’t Entirely a Waste of Time

by Jim Turley

December 30, 2020

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.” – Grace Hopper

You’re probably not reading this article. You’ve got better things to do. But if your browser does somehow accidentally send you here, I’d like to point out that 2020 was, in fact, a fairly decent year as far as electronic engineering technology goes.

Electronics now account for 40% of the cost of a new car, according to research firm Read More → "Contractually Obligated Year-End Article"

Esperanto AI Chip Exploits Thousands of Minions

Just Like Real Life, the Little Guys Do All the Work

by Jim Turley

December 28, 2020

“The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.” – Jean Baudrillard

It’s turtles all the way down. That’s the takeaway from a deep dive into Esperanto’s upcoming AI chip, melodically named ET-SoC-1. It’s organized as layer upon layer of processor cores, memory blocks, and mesh networks as far as the eye can see. This thing scales better than a tuna.

Esperanto Technologies</ … Read More → "Esperanto AI Chip Exploits Thousands of Minions"

Say Hello to Deep Vision’s Polymorphic Dataflow Architecture

by Max Maxfield

December 24, 2020

Over the years (actually, decades, now I come to think about it), I’ve seen a lot of great silicon chip architectures and technologies pop up like hopeful contenders in a semiconductor Whack-A-Mole competition, only to fail because their developers focused on the hardware side of things and largely relegated the software — in the form of design, analysis, and verification tools — to be “something we’ll definitely get around to sorting out later.”

Of course, these companies did eventually cobble some low-level software tools together, something sufficient to allow them … Read More → "Say Hello to Deep Vision’s Polymorphic Dataflow Architecture"

featured blogs

Tortuously Tricky Triangle Puzzle

Jan 15, 2021

I recently saw (what appears at first glance to be) a simple puzzle involving triangles. But is finding the solution going to be trickier than I think?...