General

In a society where surveillance is the norm, people have grown accustomed to the idea of having their information sold for profit to companies they have never even heard of. With the rise of social media, anyone with an internet connection has access to unlimited information, and the ability to broadcast information about themselves more easily than ever. However, as the ability to share information becomes more convenient, so too do the issues around privacy and personal security. Concerns about government surveillance and companies having unprecedented access to private user information have surfaced. The subject of smart cities is not exempted from these concerns either.

The idea of “smart cities” came about as a way for governments to harness the innovations of the digital revolution in order to better serve their citizens. However, the inequality of the data exhaust streams upon which cities are built raises fears that cities will only exacerbate racial and demographic inequality, not improve it, not to mention potentially putting restrictions on societies instead of making them more free. After all, the question has to be raised as to what governments will do what such a treasure trove of personal data gathered from their citizens.

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength

Government surveillance and law enforcement have the greatest potential to abuse private data. Once they begin assembling massive archives of sensitive data on their citizens, much of which is mandated by law and whose cost is involuntarily borne by taxpayers, such archives might become simply irresistible to marketers and data brokers. Kalev Leetaru, writing for Forbes, mentions Rosslyn, Virginia as an example. Anyone within that city’s limits who works from home are required to register with the city and provide them with a complete inventory of their workspace down to the furniture and provide extensive detail about their professional lives to the city on an ongoing basis.

The city also further receives information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that it uses to augment the records it holds on its citizens. Moreover, failure to provide any of the requested information will resulted in the sheriffs deputies dispatched to raid the new citizens’ home, seize their possessions, and auction them off. Shortly after moving into Rosslyn and registering with the city, Leetaru began receiving spam emails about events in the surrounding emails. It turned out that that spammers received his contact information from the city, which was making use of its involuntarily collected tax data to create commercial-oriented mailing lists for surrounding business districts.

Upon reaching out to the city, he found that the administration was freely sharing all of the personal information without any kind of written contract or legal document outlining what the recipients could do with it, thereby giving third parties carte blanc to do whatever they want with the sensitive data. The city acknowledged that it was freely sharing spreadsheets of email addresses, but that it expected those email address would be held to an honor system where by the third party would write bespoke, tailored emails to them, rather than en masse spam.

Furthermore, the city also conceded that it had no data privacy policy, and had no plans to develop one. It confirmed that it planned to continue to market its citizens’ information to external organizations without any kind of legal contact or policy laying out how and where it can be used. Leetaru concluded that the city administration does not treat the monetization of citizens’ data as a temporary oversight, but more as a permanent point of profit.

Such a notion has damning implications for cash-strapped cities which might be looking for ways to drive profit. At least with Facebook or any data-gathering social network, the user can choose to opt-out and stop using those networks. A citizen is unable to log out of a city, where its administration can send sheriffs to arrest non-compliant citizens and seize private property.

Such advancement in technology has also allowed governments to ignore basic constitutional rights. The emergence of smart cities comes along with the advent of the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly collecting data from US phone companies. The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the United States guarantees the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Only a warrant issued on probable cause can justify a search. Perhaps the Fourth Amendment might have applied to physical search and seizure, but the ability for a city to demand personal information on threat of arrest and seizure of private property sounds like a direct contradiction of that law.

The Bottom Line

People are living in an age with an unprecedented level of access to all kinds of information. Users of social media and networks can contact their far away friends in real time, and have access to events right as they develop. Such technology was the stuff of dreams, only imagined in science fiction stories in the late 20^th century. Yet, the unprecedented access to citizens’ private information is something only imagined in George Orwell’s 1984 as well. Law enforcement and government agencies having access to personal information of every citizen carries unfortunate implications for privacy and civil liberties. Moreover, in the case of Rosslyn, the city’s willingness to sell its citizens’ data to third parties, alongside its lack of regard its citizens’ privacy means that the future of smart cities might carry detrimental notions for privacy and liberty.

DEF CON, started in 1992 by the Dark Tangent, is the world’s largest running and underground hacking conference held annually at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It is a convention attended by various people from hackers, to journalists, to lawyers, to cybersecurity professionals, to federal government employees. At the second annual DEF CON Voting Village, a part of the convention that seeks to exploit voting machines to better understand vulnerabilities, an 11-year old boy managed to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website, making it appear that 2016 independent presidential candidate Darrell Castle won the state. An 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica site in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes there.

Nevertheless, it has to be noted that the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), which represents officials in charge of counting votes in most states, said the access hackers at DEF CON are given to experiment with voting machines do not reflect real world conditions. “It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systems, since many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols,” according to a statement by the NASS.

Moreover, hackers attempting to hack voting machines, which were equipped with Windows XP, found that the attack could only be done in-person. In other words, one can not remotely hack into a voting machine from a faraway location.

Nevertheles, Nico Sell, the co-founder of r00tz Aslyum, a non-profit organization that teaches children how to become hackers and the organizer of the Voting Village, said that the exercise the children took part it demonstrates the level of security vulnerabilities found in the US election system.

“Although it’s not the real voting results, it’s the results that get released to the public. And that could cause complete chaos,” Sell said. “The site may be a replica but the vulnerabilities that these kids were exploiting were not replicas, they’re the real thing.”

While the US Congress in March appropriate $380 million for state and local officials to beef up election security, Steven Melendez believes that the funds are merely a flash in the pan and are not enough to replace all the digital-only machines still in use.

The Bottom Line

Attendees at DEF CON have been exploring different ways to exploit and manipulate devices and services to do something beyond their capacities. At the Voting Village, attendees have been investigating ways election machines can be hacked, a speculative topic that has been hotly debated in the wake of the US Presidential Election of 2016. While it is important to note that the 11-year-old children managed to change the results of the election results in Florida was only a simulation, the organizer of the Voting Village maintains that the fact that an election can be easily hacked has very damning implications for the future of democracy.

In the age of cryptocurrency mining and with demand for memory getting higher, it is getting harder to find more affordable memory. Yet, there is a belief that RAM and graphics cards prices may be cheaper by about 25% in 2019. Market analysis firm DRAMeXchange says memory could drop in price by about 15-25% next year. Contract negotiations with DRAM suppliers have begun for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, and while prices of RAM have remained steady, prices for graphics memory has begun to recede amid softening DRAM demand across the board (no pun intended).

As the industry transitions to new, smaller 1X/1Y RAM nodes that have higher density, demand is simultaneously flattening. Additional fab capacity has also surfaced, and SK Hynix’s new Wuxi fab will begin pumping out bits in 2019, which would contribute to a price reduced prices. Chinese regulators also recently met with memory vendors, like Micron and Samsung, to express concerns about the continuing shortage, but the impact of those talks on the supply situation remains unclear.

PC DRAM contract prices are usually indicative of the contract price trend for other DRAM applications. This is due to PC DRAM products being highly sensitive to the change in demand and supply situations. In Q4 2018, normally a peak season, PC OEMs are not very active in DRAM purchases, considering their high inventory levels of DRAM and awareness of the possible price decline in 2019.

Graphics DRAM pricing has skyrocketed in recent years, due in major part to the rise of cryptocurrencies and the subsequent cryptocurrency gold rush, with cryptominers boosting demand beyond supply. It is speculated that the recent plunge of cryptocurrency prices, alongside the subsequent drop in demand graphic cards for mining purposes has had an effect in reduced graphics memory pricing.

IC insights has noted that DRAM vendors have profited greatly during the graphics cards shortage. For the first time in history, DRAM could be the first individual IC category to break $100 billion in yearly revenue.

The Bottom Line

Late 2017 and 2018 have been a tumultuous year for those trying to upgrade their memory, especially in terms of graphics, since cryptomining has driven demand and prices. However, a report by DRAMeXchange has it on authority that the prices of memory could drop by 25% next year. Combined with the drop in cryptocurrency prices, and perhaps a second hand market of retired miners who no longer need their graphics cards, those looking to purchase memory may rest easy that affordability may be yet on the horizon.

In an age where everything is becoming increasingly computerized, computer circuits powered practically everything. Modern life is dependent on semiconductor chips and transistors on silicon-based integrated circuits, which have the power to switch electronic signals on and off. Cheap element silicon is prevalent in these circuits since it can be used to control the flow of electricity, as it can insulate and semiconduct electricity.

Until recently, microscopic transistors squeezed onto silicon chips have halved in size each year. That reduction in size has paved the way for modern technology, yet people like Jamie Carter of TechRadar believe that silicon chips may soon outlive their usefulness. The modern digital age that semiconductors helped create has lead to the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, and 5G phones.

Moore’s Law

In 1956, Gordon Moore the co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors on a one-inch computer chip would double each year, while costs would halve. Now the transistors are doubling every 18 months, and that period might get longer. Carter believes that Moore’s Law is not a set-in-stone truth as much as it is “an observation by someone who worked for a chip-maker.” He went on to say that “the increased timescales mean intensive computer applications of the future could be under threat.”

“Silicon is reaching the limit of its performance in a growing number of applications that require increased speed, reduced latency, and light detection,” says Stephen Doran, CEO of the UK’s Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult. However, he believes that it is still too early to think of a successor to silicon. “That suggests silicon will be completely replaced, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon, and may well never happen.”

While Moore’s Law might fade away, experts think that silicon will still play a prominent role well into the foreseeable future. “There is still potential in a Moore’s Law-style performance escalation until at least 2025,” says David Harold, Vice President of Marketing Communication at Imagination Technologies. “Silicon will dominate the chip market until the 2040s.”

Craig Hampel, Chief Scientist for the Memory and Interface Division at Rambus also believes that some perspective on the silicon transistor issue is needed. “Moore’s Law specifically refers to the performance of integrated circuits made from semiconductors, and only captures the last 50-plus years of computation.”

Hampel believes that one has to look at the bigger picture to understand humanity’s need for computation, which “reaches back to the abacus, mechanical calculators, and vacuum tubes, and will likely extend well beyond semiconductors to include superconductors and quantum mechanics.”

The major issue is that computers need to be more powerful and more agile. Harold believes that that the demand for future systems to be more brain-like may “create a revolutionary second era for computing.”

More Power for Less

Researchers are looking for new ways of achieving higher performance in computers while using less power. “Cold operation of data centers of supercomputers can have significant performance, power, and cost advantage,” says Hampel.

Cold computation reduces some of the challenges of extending Moore’s Law. The natural operating temperature for cold computing machines is that of liquid nitrogen at 77K (-270C). “Nitrogen is abundant in the atmosphere, relatively inexpensive to capture in liquid form, and an efficient cooling medium,” says Hampel. “We hope to get perhaps four to ten additional years of scaling in memory performance and power.”

Another solution being examined are next-gen semiconductors made from two or more elements, making them faster and more efficient than silicon. These chips are already being utilized in future 5G and 6G phones. “Compound semiconductors combine two or more elements from the periodic table, for example gallium and nitrogen, to form gallium nitride,” says Doran. Their ability to outperform silicon makes applications like 5G and autonomous vehicles possible.

There is also quantum computing. IBM, Google, Intel, and others are in a race to create quantum computers with enormous processing power that would dwarf silicon transistors, using quantum bits. However, the problem is that quantum mechanics is still very much an uncharted, nebulous field, where quantum physicists and computer architects need to make many breakthroughs before the full potential of the technology can be realized. There’s a simple test that some in the quantum computing community think needs to be achieved before an actual quantum computer can exist: “quantum supremacy.”

“It means simply showing that a quantum machine is better at a specific task than a conventional semiconductor processor on the path of Moore’s Law,” says Hampel. So far, quantum computing is still within the realm of the theoretical.

The Bottom Line

The only constant force in the world is change. Moore’s Law has been a reliable model for predicting how silicon-based semiconductors have evolved over the last couple of decades. However, Moore’s Law has grown less reliable over time as the period over which semiconductors upgrade has been extended. Nevertheless, Moore’s Law is less of a set-in-stone law rather than an observation, and that semiconductors still have a place in the world of computing.

Nevertheless, alternative solutions are being explored, ranging from cold computing, to using alternative compounds to silicon in semiconductors, to exploring quantum computing. All these solutions are able to produce more computing power than their silicon semiconductor counterparts. It seems there will always been a need for coming up with exponential improvements to computing. In the words of Hampel, “while Moore’s Law will end, the secular and lasting trend of exponential computing capacity will likely not.”

A group of wireless carriers worldwide announced in late June that they would adopt and implement standard procedures developed to secure the Internet of Things (IoT). They have committed to implementing the GSMA IoT Security Guidelines, which outline best practices and recommendations for security covering the entire IoT ecosystem.

The carriers involved include AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, KDDI, Orange, Telefonica, Telenor, and Telia. They have also agreed to adopt a comprehensive security assessment scheme to ensure IoT services are protected against security risks. This development comes as GSMA intelligence forecast IoT connections will reach 3.1 billion by 2025.

The CTO of GSMA, Alex Sinclair, said: “for IoT to flourish, the industry needs an aligned and consistent approach to IoT security. Our guidelines encourage the industry to adopt a robust set of best practices that will help create a more security IoT market with trusted, reliable services that can scale as the market grows.”

The Guidelines

According to the GSMA, the guidelines are targeted at IoT service providers, device manufacturers, developers, and mobile operators. Their goal is to address typical cybersecurity and data privacy issues associated with IoT services, and outline a blow-by-blow process to securely launch solutions to market. The guidelines are supported by an IoT Security Assessment scheme, which provides a checklist to support the secure launch of IoT solutions into the market and keep them secure throughout their lifecycles.

Thus, a sustainable IoT ecosystem that is designed for end-to-end security is possible. Both the guidelines and the assessment cover the fast-growing low power wide area (LPWA) or mobile IoT technologies such as Long Term Evolution, Category M1 (LTE-M) and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT).

“Today it has become imperative to focus on the need to have a common IoT assessment and security guidelines that are adapted by global operators, IoT device manufacturers and developers. With the global opportunity for IoT to grow and enable disruptive innovations, these guidelines will help it to flourish and being adapted across industries and services,” said Francisco Salcedo, Senior Vice President of Etisalat Digital.

The guidelines coincide with the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, where IoT security was a prominent theme. In a post-panel interview, Jiang Wangcheng, President of IoT solutions at Huawei mentioned that “IoT security is a serious issue, and government must take the lead on this.” He believes that the government will “take an important role – they can organize companies and create standards,” but he also went onto say that IoT service providers “should secure service quality, including security.”

The Bottom Line

Security issues in IoT have long been ignored or kept to the sidelines. However, in the wake of serious data breaches and attacks, manufacturers and providers are finally waking up to the reality of the need to secure the Internet of Things. The GSMA and the wireless carriers involved have stepped up to the plate, signing up to guidelines and an assessment to ensure that their services are secure. With experts noting the importance of the guidelines, and others noting that the participation of both public and private sectors alike, this development is a positive step forward for IoT security.

It is a commonly believed notion that a company’s sole responsibility is to report a profit to their shareholders. That said, it is a company’s that truly rise above and beyond that sole responsibility and contribute to its surrounding environs and community that makes a company great. Rambus is dedicated to strengthening and improving the quality of life in its communities through partnerships, engagement and employee giving. One such example is the Innovator of the Future Rambus Scholarship.

Mission Statement

The Rambus “Innovator of the Future” Scholarship seeks to broaden the educational opportunities of students who, by virtue of their academic and extracurricular achievement, demonstrate a passion for science and technology that extends beyond the classroom. The winners must possess strong leadership and communication skills and the desire to positively impact society through innovation in science and technology.

Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for the scholarship, students must be a high school student graduating before Fall, 2018, attending a high school located in Cupertino, Los Altos, Mountain View, Santa Clara, or Sunnyvale, CA. The high schools eligible are Fremont High School, Homestead High School, the Kings Academy, Los Altos High School, Mountain View High School, St. Francis High School, and Wilcox High School. The candidates also must be attending a four-year university program of study beginning in Fall, 2018 and maintain a minimum of a 3.0 grade point average (GPA) on a 4.0 scale from grades 10-12. Immediate family members of Rambus employees and contractors are not eligible to apply.

The Selection Process

The Rambus Scholarship Committee selected winners based on academic excellence (particularly in the field of STEM), passion for technology, leadership in school, civic and extracurricular activities, and motivation to serve and succeed. Due earlier this year, finalists were interviewed in Sunnyvale during springtime. The winners, Rebecca Hauser and Rishabh Jain, were announced towards late spring of this year.

The Winners

Rebecca Hauser graduated from Homestead High School, and will be headed to Cornell to pursue biomedical engineering. She worked at Stanford’s SIMR lab on a “sensory substitution” glove for patients suffering from peripheral neuropathy, following in her mother’s footsteps. She also worked on some sensor-related work in Stanford’s Camarillo Lab, regarding sports-related concussion research. She also is a cross-country runner.

Rishabh Jain, who graduated from St. Francis High School, will be heading to Duke University, also to study biomedical engineering. He was the captain of the debate team in high school, and also worked on a Music Students Service League that organized piano recitals for students to perform in senior assisted-living centers. He also interned at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, working on Parkinson’s related projects. In college, Jain wishes to pursue research in the “organ on a chip” space. Recently, he has taken on cooking as a hobby.

The Bottom Line

The Innovators for the Future scholarship hopes to broaden opportunities and possibilities for students, particularly those with high academic achievement and a big passion for subjects in STEM fields. Rebecca Hauser and Rishabh Jain are shining examples of the next generation of great minds in technology. The scholarship is but one of the example of how Rambus is committed to supporting the local community.