AI on the Edge

AI on the Edge
by Bernard Murphy on 11-02-2016 at 7:00 am

A lot of the press we see on AI tends to be of the “big iron” variety – recognition algorithms for Facebook images, Google TensorFlow and IBM Watson systems. But AI is already on edge-nodes such as smartphones and home automation hubs, for functions like voice-recognition, facial recognition and natural language understanding.… Read More


The challenge of insecure IoT

The challenge of insecure IoT
by Bernard Murphy on 11-01-2016 at 7:00 am

An attack on Dyn (a DNS service provider) through a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack brought down Github, Amazon and Twitter for a while and is thought to have been launched through IoT devices. Hangzhou Xiongmai, a provider of webcams and the most publicly pilloried source of weakness in the attack is now recalling all… Read More


Mentor Webinar Series: Integrating the Systems Engineering Flow

Mentor Webinar Series: Integrating the Systems Engineering Flow
by Bernard Murphy on 10-28-2016 at 7:00 am

Product lifecycle management is probably not the most gripping topic for most design engineers. You want to get on with architecture, design, verification and implementation. But if you are building products for any safety-sensitive application in a car, a medical appliance, avionics, railway applications in Europe – to name… Read More


The Ising on the Cake

The Ising on the Cake
by Bernard Murphy on 10-27-2016 at 7:00 am

Just when you thought you knew all the possible foundations for computing, along comes another one. Forget von Neumann, this approach models Ising machines, systems built on solving a statistical ensemble model of ferromagnetism. The concept is quite simple. Imagine a lattice of magnetic dipoles/spins, each of which can only… Read More


End-to-End Secure IoT Solutions from ARM

End-to-End Secure IoT Solutions from ARM
by Bernard Murphy on 10-25-2016 at 11:30 am

ARM announced today a comprehensive suite of solutions for IoT support, from IP optimized for applications in this space all the way to cloud-based support to manage edge devices in the field. Their motivation is to provide a faster path to secure IoT, from the chip to the cloud. One especially interesting component of this solution… Read More


Disarming Trolls

Disarming Trolls
by Bernard Murphy on 10-20-2016 at 7:00 am

An unintended consequence of the ubiquity of the Internet, particularly in social media, is the rise of the troll. Trolls post comments of unbelievable vitriol in some cases, comments that if issued in person and in public might lead to arrest and psych evaluations. Then vitriol turns into viral vitriol and the helpless target … Read More


Phish Finding

Phish Finding
by Bernard Murphy on 10-18-2016 at 7:00 am

I wrote recently on the biggest hole in security – us. While sophisticated hacks on hardware and software make for good technology reading, fooling users into opening the front door remains one of the easiest and lowest cost ways for evil-doers to break into our systems. And one of the more popular ways to fool us is phishing in all … Read More


eSilicon Just Made It Easier to Explore Memory Tradeoffs

eSilicon Just Made It Easier to Explore Memory Tradeoffs
by Bernard Murphy on 10-14-2016 at 7:00 am

If you are building an advanced SoC, you know that you’re going to need a lot of embedded memory. Unless this is your first rodeo, you also know that which memories you choose can have a huge impact on Power, Performance and Area (PPA) and, for some applications, Energy (power integrated over time), Temperature and Reliability. Which… Read More


Machine Learning – Turning Up the Sizzle in EDA

Machine Learning – Turning Up the Sizzle in EDA
by Bernard Murphy on 10-13-2016 at 7:00 am

There’s always a lot of activity in EDA to innovate and refine specialized algorithms in functional modeling, implementation, verification and many other aspects of design automation. But when Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft are pushing AI, deep learning, Big Data and cloud technologies, it can be hard not to see… Read More


AI and the black box problem

AI and the black box problem
by Bernard Murphy on 10-11-2016 at 7:00 am

Deep learning based on neural nets and many other types of machine learning have amazed us with their ability to mimic or exceed human abilities in recognizing features in images, speech and text. That leads us to imagine revolutions in how we interact with the electronic and physical worlds in home automation, autonomous driving,… Read More