Articles – Page 188

November 6, 2014

I know most of you read the first few words of the title up to the colon and thought, “Oh jeez, he’s back on his Serious Security Soapbox and using the Apple celebrity photo hack as a cautionary tale.” Hardly. And lest anyone think I’ve been hard on Apple of late vis-à-vis their eponymous smart watch, I am going to build a veritable security fortress using the iPhone 6.</ … Read More → "Apple and Serious Security: NOT an Oxymoron"

Are You an Android or a Robot?

Business Models Collide, Over and Over Again

by Jim Turley

November 5, 2014

There’s an old saying that programming is – ahem – like practicing the world’s oldest profession. In both cases, there is no inventory, no fixed overhead costs, and no actual goods sold. Instead, the “product” is really a service. Both depreciate rapidly and both are labor-intensive. Most of all, practitioners get to sell their product to one customer and then sell it again to somebody else. With no cost-of-goods-sold (COGS), every sale should be pure profit, right? And yet, people in neither profession ever seem to get rich. What’s wrong with that business model?

Overvoltage Protection in High Speed Communication Ports

by Bryon Moyer

November 4, 2014

Editor’s Note: While Amelia’s Halloween Fish Fry had us all running out and gleefully building our own singing Tesla coils, and even though shuffling quietly across the carpet and sending a bright 10,000-volt arc from your fingertip to a napping family member can be a barrel of laughs, there are times where we most definitely do not find electrostatic discharge so amusing. The first of those, of course, is when we ARE the sleeping family member. Sheesh, what an insensitive prank!

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A New IoT Cellular Network

SIGFOX Is Installing Cells in Europe and Beyond

by Bryon Moyer

November 3, 2014

It’s not every day that a major infrastructure build-out happens.

Imagine that you wanted to switch from your current cable provider, but you wanted to stay with cable technology. The only way you could do that (other than finding some reseller that leverages the cable you’re trying to escape) would be for a competing company to come dig up your town and install a whole new parallel network. Yeah, not likely to happen. (Which is why the incumbent cable companies can act like the monopolies they are.)

Similarly with cell networks, although slightly … Read More → "A New IoT Cellular Network"

I Brick Your Chip

Driver Update Disables Counterfeit Chips

by Jim Turley

October 29, 2014

It sounds like something out of a spy thriller. A piece of security software, masquerading as a routine driver update, sniffs out enemy chips and terminates them with extreme prejudice. There is no fix; the chip, and everything it’s connected to, is bricked.

Sneaky, huh? And not really all that hard to implement. With nearly everything connected “to the cloud,” it’s easy to insert new software remotely. And we’re all accustomed to downloading and installing new drivers every few weeks, so there’s nothing suspicious that would tip anyone off.

Except…

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Sights on Systems

Mentor Elevates PCB Game

by Kevin Morris

October 28, 2014

For decades, the PCB design tools competition has been a board game. The scope of the problem was the design of a single PCB, and the competitors – Mentor, Cadence, Zuken, Altium/Protel, and the rest – all battled for supremacy with the scope, features, power, and cost of their solutions. The market for board tools actually got a little boring for years, with the major players competing mainly on cost and incumbency in the high-end (enterprise) level and in the low-cost (desktop) markets.

In the past few years, however, the battle has been heating … Read More → "Sights on Systems"

Constraining Light

Or, How the Heck Do I Design a Photonic Circuit?

by Bryon Moyer

October 27, 2014

Several weeks ago we took a look at the expanding role of EDA. And then a couple weeks ago we delved into the bizarre world of silicon photonics. Yeah, we didn’t get too deep because the bottom drops off pretty quickly, and I’m not sure I could tread water credibly any deeper. But we got a flavor.

So now, we bring these two … Read More → "Constraining Light"

Let’s Get This Party Kickstarted

Is Crowdfunding a Good Option For Your Million-Dollar Idea?

by Larra Morris

October 23, 2014

“More ideas are lost than found.” That was Maker Faire co-founder Dale Dougherty’s response to a reporter’s question about intellectual property concerns in the show-and-tell environment of the World Maker Faire (quoted in Kevin Morris’s terrific article about the faire). This simple statement seems especially true in the world of engineering. How many ideas for new projects, new start-up companies, and new inventions never make it out of their would-be inventor’s brain? The electrical engineering industry has probably produced millions of … Read More → "Let’s Get This Party Kickstarted"

Grabbing Keys Out of Thin Air

Rambus’s AES Crypto IP Resists DPA Attacks

by Jim Turley

October 22, 2014

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” –
Arthur C. Clarke

You have got to be kidding me. I mean, I’m an engineer. I know how stuff works. And you’re telling me you can somehow snag my computer’s encryption keys out of thin air? No way. No. @%$#-ing. Way.

Way.

I’ve seen it happen. I didn’t believe it at first, but there’s nothing quite like a live demonstration to make you a convert. It’s time to stock up on tinfoil hats.

Moore’s Law Meets the Trade Press

EE Journal Turns 11

by Kevin Morris

October 21, 2014

We live and work in an amazing time. The global community of electronic engineers has created the greatest leap of technological progress in human history. In the almost fifty years that Moore’s Law has existed, the number of transistors we can put on a single chip has risen from fifty to somewhere around twenty billion. That is a truly amazing achievement. And the power of that almost unimaginable feat has rippled and ripped through just about every aspect of our lives and our culture.

As the creators of that change, we have faced a unique challenge. … Read More → "Moore’s Law Meets the Trade Press"