BURLINGAME, Calif. – 3-D chips based on through-silicon vias (TSVs) are moving past the ''PowerPoint engineering’’ stage, but issues remain with the technology, according to an analyst.

The now ubiquitous passive vehicle immobilizers have played a major role in improving car security. With their sophisticated technology, they have helped to reduce car theft significantly. This article provides interesting insights into design and security aspects of passive immobilizers.

Many designers under appreciate the many issues associated with wirelessly enabling their designs, to the extent that delays of up to three or four months are commonplace. As the number of wirelessly enabled embedded starts to grow exponentially with the emergence of the smart grid and myriad portable devices and sensors, the number of engineers getting blindsided will grow proportionately.

SAN FRANCISCO—Shipments of built-in car Wi-Fi systems are set to soar by more than 40 fold by 2017, as automakers increasingly view wireless connectivity as a key competitive differentiator, according to market research firm iSuppli Corp., which is now part of business intelligence provider IHS Inc.

Rising interest in consumer and user-generated mobile video – coupled with growing demand for higher resolution – is creating a challenge for tablet design. Devices will need to handle large amounts of data quickly in order to satisfy consumer expectations. Two keys to meeting this need are enhanced USB connectivity and off-loading data tasks from the CPU.

SAN FRANCISCO—South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said Thursday (Sept. 23) it has begun mass producing an 8 gigabyte small outline dual inline memory module (SoDIMM) for laptops and mobile workstations.

A disaster response team in Florida calls for emergency aid using a mobile phone, even though cell antennas and networks in the area have been destroyed by a hurricane. On the same day, a soldier in a Mid-East war zone picks up a mobile phone and talks to her daughter about her first day of school.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is expected to create a study group to help pick a transport for a future gigabit-class version of the short-range wireless technology. Among the leading candidates are the rival flavors of 60 GHz technology promoted by the WirelessHD Consortium and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance.

Our industry moves incredibly quickly. The hot topic last year is very rarely so important this year – either we will have solved it or some other issue will have risen to even greater prominence. The issue of efficiency, however, has been a relatively constant theme through my time in the industry, now some 24 years but efficiency has had many faces over that time.