An IoT Endpoint System-on-Chip for Secure and Energy-Efficient Near-Sensor Analytics

Near-sensor data analytics is a promising direction for IoT endpoints, as it minimizes energy spent on communication and reduces network load - but it also poses security concerns, as valuable data is stored or sent over the network at various stages of the analytics pipeline. Using encryption to protect sensitive data at the boundary of the on-chip analytics engine is a way to address data security issues. To cope with the combined workload of analytics and encryption in a tight power envelope, we propose Fulmine, a System-on-Chip based on a tightly-coupled multi-core cluster augmented with specialized blocks for compute-intensive data processing and encryption functions, supporting software programmability for regular computing tasks. The Fulmine SoC, fabricated in 65nm technology, consumes less than 20mW on average at 0.8V achieving an efficiency of up to 70pJ/B in encryption, 50pJ/px in convolution, or up to 25MIPS/mW in software. As a strong argument for real-life flexible application of our platform, we show experimental results for three secure analytics use cases: secure autonomous aerial surveillance with a state-of-the-art deep CNN consuming 3.16pJ per equivalent RISC op; local CNN-based face detection with secured remote recognition in 5.74pJ/op; and seizure detection with encrypted data collection from EEG within 12.7pJ/op.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication to the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems - I: Regular Paper

TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2008

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Reconfigurable Mobile Multimedia Systems

This paper discusses reconfigurability issues in lowpower hand-held multimedia systems, with particular emphasis on energy conservation. We claim that a radical new approach has to be taken in order to fulfill the requirements - in terms of processing power and energy consumption - of future mobile applications. A reconfigurable systems-architecture in combination with a QoS driven operating system is introduced that can deal with the inherent dynamics of a mobile system. We present the preliminary results of studies we have done on reconfiguration in hand-held mobile computers: by having reconfigurable media streams, by using reconfigurable processing modules and by migrating functions

Bioaffinity detection of pathogens on surfaces

The demand for improved technologies capable of rapidly detecting pathogens with high sensitivity and selectivity in complex environments continues to be a significant challenge that helps drive the development of new analytical techniques. Surface-based detection platforms are particularly attractive as multiple bioaffinity interactions between different targets and corresponding probe molecules can be monitored simultaneously in a single measurement. Furthermore, the possibilities for developing new signal transduction mechanisms alongside novel signal amplification strategies aremuchmore varied. In this article, we describe some of the latest advances in the use of surface bioaffinity detection of pathogens. Three major sections will be discussed: (i) a brief overview on the choice of probe molecules such as antibodies, proteins and aptamers specific to pathogens and surface attachment chemistries to immobilize those probes onto various substrates, (ii) highlighting examples among the current generation of surface biosensors, and (iii) exploring emerging technologies that are highly promising and likely to form the basis of the next generation of pathogenic sensors

Fully Integrated Biochip Platforms for Advanced Healthcare

Recent advances in microelectronics and biosensors are enabling developments of innovative biochips for advanced healthcare by providing fully integrated platforms for continuous monitoring of a large set of human disease biomarkers. Continuous monitoring of several human metabolites can be addressed by using fully integrated and minimally invasive devices located in the sub-cutis, typically in the peritoneal region. This extends the techniques of continuous monitoring of glucose currently being pursued with diabetic patients. However, several issues have to be considered in order to succeed in developing fully integrated and minimally invasive implantable devices. These innovative devices require a high-degree of integration, minimal invasive surgery, long-term biocompatibility, security and privacy in data transmission, high reliability, high reproducibility, high specificity, low detection limit and high sensitivity. Recent advances in the field have already proposed possible solutions for several of these issues. The aim of the present paper is to present a broad spectrum of recent results and to propose future directions of development in order to obtain fully implantable systems for the continuous monitoring of the human metabolism in advanced healthcare applications

TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month