Bal S. Sandhu

Device and technology implications of the Internet of Things

We live in an interconnected world. Computing power once reserved for server rooms now resides in our pockets. Tablets now outsell PCs. As marked as these changes have been, we are now entering a new era of vastly greater connectivity, where people interact with the world around them in entirely new ways. The Internet of Things is in its infancy, so predictions of precisely what it will become are dangerous, but several things are clear. First, the leaf nodes of the network will share some device and technology properties in terms of cost and computing capability, but also analog and wireless functionality. These nodes will interact with people and with the cloud. The “little data” of these interactions needs to integrate seamlessly with the “big data” of the world around them. The trust, security and service components of these interactions lead to further device and technology requirements. This talk looks at the trends and discusses some likely paths forward.

Test implications and challenges in near threshold computing special session

As technology scales deep into nanometer era, power and energy have become major design constraints, especially for energy-harvested and similar ultra-low power systems, such as embedded processors, remote sensors and implantable devices for the Internet of Things (IoT). Aggressive supply voltage scaling is one of the most efficient ways of reducing power and energy for digital circuits. Near-threshold computing (NTC), in which the supply voltage is close to the threshold voltage of the transistor, can provide a very high energy efficiency (10X or higher) compared to the traditional super-threshold region at the cost of significant (>10X) increase in time to complete a task. However, NTC can come with some major challenges such as decreased functional margins in various circuit elements and greatly increased sensitivity to process variations. To ensure correct functionality in the field, testing of NTC circuits faces some serious challenges, and possibly requires a paradigm shift from conventional testing methods.