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SIM cards and avoiding stranded IoT assets

SIM cards and avoiding stranded IoT assets
by Don Dingee on 11-24-2014 at 4:00 pm

Since pennants, drums, smoke, and horses fell out of favor to more advanced communication technology, network operators have struggled to find balance. Too few subscribers interested, and infrastructure investments completely fail. Just the right number of paying users, revenue streams provide profit and ability to invest… Read More


Did we forget non-volatile memory?

Did we forget non-volatile memory?
by Don Dingee on 10-15-2014 at 7:00 pm

In our rush to shrink SoC nodes more and more to achieve better performance and more complex devices, we may have forgotten a passenger in the back seat: non-volatile memory. There has been little discussion of this in the pages of SemiWiki until now. Let’s give it a closer look.

Embedded flash has usually been associated with microcontrollers,… Read More


Sidense overlays OTP on TSMC 16nm FinFET

Sidense overlays OTP on TSMC 16nm FinFET
by Don Dingee on 09-13-2014 at 7:00 am

Process shrinks, which have served us well for most of the Moore’s Law journey, are reaching their limits. For switching transistors, the biggest problems of leakage current and gate oxide vulnerability in planar MOSFETs have led the industry to new 3D microstructures such as FinFET. For non-volatile memory, the problem is generally… Read More


Kilopass v. Sidense Update!

Kilopass v. Sidense Update!
by Daniel Nenni on 08-24-2014 at 12:30 pm

It looks like Sidense finally has closure on their request for attorney fees. Generally, in the U.S., parties in a lawsuit pay for their respective attorney fees which can be staggering. However, U.S. law allows the courts to shift the payment of the winner’s attorney fees to the losing party for “exceptional” reasons. Based on … Read More


Wipe that smile off your device

Wipe that smile off your device
by Don Dingee on 07-30-2014 at 8:00 am

Privacy is a tough enough question when using a device – but what about when we’re done with it? In a world of two year service agreements with device upgrades and things being attached to long-life property like cars and homes, your data could fall into the hands of the next owner way too easily.

“Oh, it’s OK, I wiped the phone with a factory… Read More


Sidense NVM IP clears TSMC9000 at 28nm

Sidense NVM IP clears TSMC9000 at 28nm
by Don Dingee on 05-29-2014 at 7:00 pm

Maybe I’ve spent too many years whiffing solder flux fumes and absorbing doses of X-band radiation in anechoic chambers, but I’m a firm believer in the axiom: “Give me enough engineers, and I can get 10 of anything to work right, once.” We have to make this … fit into this … using only this stuff … is what legends are made of.… Read More


180nm still a big deal

180nm still a big deal
by Don Dingee on 05-07-2014 at 3:00 pm

When I was reading the recent Daniel Payne article “Designing Change Into Semiconductor Techonomics” with commentary on a recent presentation from Aart de Geus of Synopsys, one chart jumped out at me: the most popular process node for new design starts today is 180nm.

Upon mentioning that to a few of my IoT counterparts, they quickly… Read More


NVM central to multi-layer trust in cloud

NVM central to multi-layer trust in cloud
by Don Dingee on 04-21-2014 at 4:00 pm

Pop quiz: Name one of the hottest applications for non-volatile memory – A) processor and code configuration; B) RFID tags; C) secure encryption keys; D) all the above. The answer is D, but not in the way you may be thinking; a new approach is using all these ideas at once, combined in SoC designs targeting advanced security … Read More


Care and trimming of MEMS sensors

Care and trimming of MEMS sensors
by Don Dingee on 03-28-2014 at 2:00 pm

My first job in electronic design circa 1981 was making analog autopilots and control devices for RPVs – the early form of what today we call UAVs. A couple of really delicate boxes with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and magnetometers, and several boards full of LM148 quad op-amps surrounded by a lot of resistors and capacitors made… Read More


Smart cards hard for the US to figure out?

Smart cards hard for the US to figure out?
by Don Dingee on 02-18-2014 at 3:30 pm

Every once in a while, I just scratch my head and wonder just what in the wide, wide world of tech is going on. More than ever, it seems the big barriers to adoption aren’t a lack of technology – instead, barriers come from a system that staunchly defends the old way of doing things, even when the participants are battered, broken, and … Read More