The Kynix Blog

A new type of radio frequency identification (RFID) chip has been developed that is virtually impossible to hack.If such chips were widely adopted, it could mean that an identity thief couldn't steal your credit card number or key card information by sitting next to you at a café, and high-tech burglars couldn't swipe expensive goods from a warehouse and replace them with dummy tags.Texas Instruments has built several prototypes of the new chip, to the researchers' specifications, and in experiments the chips have behaved as expected. The researchers presented their research this week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, in San Francisco.According to Chiraag Juvekar, a graduate student in electrical engineering at MIT and first author on the new paper, the chip is designed to prevent so-called side-channel attacks. Side-channel attacks analyze patterns of memory access or fluctuations in power usage when a device is performing a cryptographic operation, in order to extract its cryptographic key."The idea in a side-channel attack is that a given execution of the cryptographic algorithm only leaks a slight amount of information," Juvekar says. "So you need to execute the cryptographic algorithm with the same secret many, many times to get enough leakage to extract a complete secret."One way to thwart side-channel attacks is to regularly change secret keys. In that case, the RFID chip would run a random-number generator that would spit out a new secret key after each transaction. A central server would run the same generator, and every time an RFID scanner queried the tag, it would relay the results to the server, to see if the current key was valid.BlackoutSuch a system would still, however, be vulnerable to a "power glitch" attack, in which the RFID chip's power would be repeatedly cut right before it changed its secret key. An attacker could then run the same side-channel attack thousands of times, with the same key. Power-glitch attacks have been used to circumvent limits on the number of incorrect password entries in password-protected devices, but RFID tags are particularly vulnerable to them, since they're charged by tag readers and have no onboard power supplies.Two design innovations allow the MIT researchers' chip to thwart power-glitch attacks: One is an on-chip power supply whose connection to the chip circuitry would be virtually impossible to cut, and the other is a set of "nonvolatile" memory cells that can store whatever data the chip is working on when it begins to lose power.For both of these features, the researchers—Juvekar; Anantha Chandrakasan, who is Juvekar's advisor and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Hyung-Min Lee, who was a postdoc in Chandrakasan's group when the work was done and is now at IBM; and TI's Joyce Kwong, who did her master's degree and PhD with Chandrakasan—use a special type of material known as a ferroelectric crystals.As a crystal, a ferroelectric material consists of molecules arranged into a regular three-dimensional lattice. In every cell of the lattice, positive and negative charges naturally separate, producing electrical polarization. The application of an electric field, however, can align the cells' polarization in either of two directions, which can represent the two possible values of a bit of information.When the electric field is removed, the cells maintain their polarization. Texas Instruments and other chip manufacturers have been using ferroelectric materials to produce nonvolatile memory, or computer memory that retains data when it's powered off.Complementary capacitorsA ferroelectric crystal can also be thought of as a capacitor, an electrical component that separates charges and is characterized by the voltage between its negative and positive poles. Texas Instruments' manufacturing process can produce ferroelectric cells with either of two voltages: 1.5 volts or 3.3 volts.The researchers' new chip uses a bank of 3.3-volt capacitors as an on-chip energy source. But it also features 571 1.5-volt cells that are discretely integrated into the chip's circuitry. When the chip's power source—the external scanner—is removed, the chip taps the 3.3-volt capacitors and completes as many operations as it can, then stores the data it's working on in the 1.5-volt cells.When power returns, before doing anything else the chip recharges the 3.3-volt capacitors, so that if it's interrupted again, it will have enough power to store data. Then it resumes its previous computation. If that computation was an update of the secret key, it will complete the update before responding to a query from the scanner. Power-glitch attacks won't work.Because the chip has to charge capacitors and complete computations every time it powers on, it's somewhat slower than conventional RFID chips. But in tests, the researchers found that they could get readouts from their chips at a rate of 30 per second, which should be more than fast enough for most RFID applications."In the age of ubiquitous connectivity, security is one of the paramount challenges we face," says Ahmad Bahai, chief technology officer at Texas Instruments. "Because of this, Texas Instruments sponsored the authentication tag research at MIT that is being presented at ISSCC. We believe this research is an important step toward the goal of a robust, low-cost, low-power authentication protocol for the industrial Internet."   

 Futurists are encouraged by possibilities residing in Internet-connected sensors for making us better aware of how to get through the day,Now a people-counting product called Density, a combo of hardware and software app, proposes one more step in humanizing data-collecting for our own benefit—figuring out how the day will go based on people-traffic. Density is both sensor and app; the population data of a place is shared real-time via the cloud.Placed on a doorframe, it is designed to tell you how crowded or empty is a conference room, store, restaurant or other place you need or want to visit."Our sensor gets attached to a place's entrance, measures anonymous movement as people come and go, and generates real-time and historical data that can be integrated anywhere," said Density. Density uses infrared light to measure movement. By design, Density cannot capture any personally identifiable information about consumers.The app works by surfacing data collected by small, Internet-connected, infrared optical sensors in the doorway of each business, said Rachel Metz in MIT Technology Review.Using Density, a restaurant, for example, could detect and then broadcast if there were open tables. If you wanted to visit a gym, you could check online to see if the treadmills were free to use. As for night life, "No one likes a bar that's too crowded, or for that matter, one that's too dead," said Fast Company. Density could help.This would not be the first time somebody has thought of a solution to count people. Surveillance cameras and so-called break-beam systems, said Metz, have been used to keep tally based on how often the infrared beam is broken by a passerby.Metz wrote that Density CEO Andrew Farah said Density's aim was to provide another way which would do away with privacy concerns over cameras, while also collecting data in realtime. For business owners, the sensors would help them understand their foot traffic from day to day.Developers would be another group to benefit, through a Density API. Density, said psfk, is "completely Internet-connected, and the data it collects can be accessed by the developer community, which gives rise to a whole new field of entrepreneurial startups."So far, said Metz, Density has installed prototypes of its sensors in over a dozen businesses. They include coffee shops as well as other types of establishments. Workfrom, for example, is a website that is aggregating data to notify remote workers of the least crowded places to get work done, said psfk"Their best spots get very busy," said Density, and Density measures real-time seating capacity. Workfrom integrates the data into their website.Density said another example is in Berkeley, California, where "a team is adding Density to school gyms and workspaces. From anywhere on campus, students will be able to see if a popular place is busy or quiet."Stacey Higginbotham of Fortune, in an earlier report on the startup, commented that Density's technology offering "has myriad potential applications. If applied to public institutions like the post office or motor-vehicles departments, Density's technology looks less like a plaything and more like a valuable tool for making the service economy more efficient." 

Harvard researchers have identified a whole new class of high-performing organic molecules, inspired by vitamin B2, that can safely store electricity from intermittent energy sources like solar and wind power in large batteries.The development builds on previous work in which the team developed a high-capacity flow battery rechargreable that stored energy in organic molecules called quinones and a food additive called ferrocyanide. That advance was a game-changer, delivering the first high-performance, non-flammable, non-toxic, non-corrosive, and low-cost chemicals that could enable large-scale, inexpensive electricity storage.While the versatile quinones show great promise for flow batteries, Harvard researchers continued to explore other organic molecules in pursuit of even better performance. But finding that same versatility in other organic systems has been challenging."Now, after considering about a million different quinones, we have developed a new class of battery electrolyte material that expands the possibilities of what we can do," said Kaixiang Lin, a Ph.D. student at Harvard and first author of the paper. "Its simple synthesis means it should be manufacturable on a large scale at a very low cost, which is an important goal of this project."Flow batteries store energy in solutions in external tanks—the bigger the tanks, the more energy they store. In 2014, Michael J. Aziz, the Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Roy Gordon, the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Professor of Chemistry and their team at Harvard replaced metal ions used as conventional battery electrolyte materials in acidic electrolytes with quinones, molecules that store energy in plants and animals. In 2015, they developed a quinone that could work in alkaline solutions alongside a common food additive.In this most recent research, the team found inspiration in vitamin B2, which helps to store energy from food in the body. The key difference between B2 and quinones is that nitrogen atoms, instead of oxygen atoms, are involved in picking up and giving off electrons.."They have high stability and solubility and provide high battery voltage and storage capacity. Because vitamins are remarkably easy to make, this molecule could be manufactured on a large scale at a very low cost.""We designed these molecules to suit the needs of our battery, but really it was nature that hinted at this way to store energy," said Gordon, co-senior author of the paper. "Nature came up with similar molecules that are very important in storing energy in our bodies."The team will continue to explore quinones, as well as this new universe of molecules, in pursuit of a high-performing, long-lasting and inexpensive flow battery. 

If you want to save on your monthly electric bill and reduce your greenhouse gas emissions at the same time, you might buy a new, energy-efficient refrigerator. Or water heater. Or clothes dryer. But if you can only replace one of these, which will give you the biggest payback?You could try to figure that out by comparing the energy-use labels from your existing appliances with those of the models you might purchase—if you still have your old labels. Even then, the numbers may differ significantly from your actual usage, depending on factors such as age, condition, and your local climate. But soon, there could be a much easier way to figure out exactly how much power is being used by every appliance, lighting fixture, and device in your home, with pinpoint accuracy and at low cost, thanks to devices and software developed by researchers at MIT.The team's findings, developed over several years of intensive research, are described in a series of papers, including one published this week in the IEEE Sensors Journal, in a paper by MIT Professor of Electrical Engineering Steven Leeb and recent graduates David Lawrence MEng '16 and John Donnal PhD '16. Another paper from the team, which also includes as co-author James Paris PhD '13, is still in press.While many groups have worked on developing devices to monitor electricity use, the new MIT system has some key advantages over other approaches. First, it involves no complex installation: No wires need to be disconnected, and the placement of the postage-stamp-sized vibration sensors over the incoming power line does not require any particular precision—the system is designed to be self-calibrating. Second, because it samples data very quickly, the sensors can pick up enough detailed information about spikes and patterns in the voltage and current that the system can, thanks to dedicated software, tell the difference between every different kind of light, motor, and other device in the home and show exactly which ones go on and off, at what times.Own your own dataPerhaps most significantly, the system is designed so that all of the detailed information stays right inside the user's own home, eliminating concerns about privacy that potential users may have when considering power-monitoring systems. The detailed analysis, including the potential for specialized analysis based on an individual user's specific needs or interests, can be provided by customized apps that can be developed using the MIT team's system.Tests of the system have showed its potential to save energy and greenhouse emissions—and even to improve safety. One installation at a military base used for training exercises revealed that large tents were being heated all day during winter months, even though they were unoccupied for most of the daytime hours—a significant waste of money and fuel (which, in a combat setting, could be an important logistical concern). Another test installation, in a home, found an anomalous voltage pattern that revealed a wiring flaw that caused some copper plumbing pipes to carry a potentially dangerous live voltage."For a long time, the premise has been that if we could get access to better information [about energy use], we would be able to create some significant savings," Leeb says. He and his students have been tackling the problem for more than 10 years and bit by bit have found ways to circumvent the daunting problems involved in achieving this basic task.First was the ability to monitor changes in voltage and current without cutting the main incoming power line to a home or business (an expensive process requiring a licensed electrician) or plugging every appliance into a special monitoring device. Other groups have attempted to use wireless sensors to pick up the very faint magnetic and electric fields near a wire, but such systems have required a complex alignment process since the fields in some places can cancel each other out. The MIT team solved the problem by using an array of five sensors, each slightly offset from the others, and a calibration system that tracks the readings from each sensor and figures out which one is positioned to give the strongest signal.Interpreting the data flowThe next trick was in figuring out how to analyze the reams of data flowing in from the high-speed sensors, in order to tease out which bits correspond to current and voltage, and how that information could be used to identify "signatures" of specific appliances. This is possible because every motor or device has distinctive characteristics as to exactly how fast and how much the voltage varies, or spikes, at the moment the device switches on, or as it operates. After extensive testing in the lab, in homes, at the Fort Devens Army base outside Boston, and aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Spencer, the team was able to develop a catalog of such signatures, to identify each kind of electrical load.And finally, given the prodigious amount of raw data generated by the system, the team had to figure out how to extract the useful information and display it in a way that would make it easy for people to make decisions about energy investments. They developed an interface that allows users to "zoom in" on specific time segments, revealing enough data to tell when a refrigerator turns on or off, or goes into its defrost cycle, or how often a water heater is switching on and off during the day."A bunch of major players have gotten into, and out of, this field," says Leeb, including giants like Google and Microsoft. But now, he says, the MIT team has solved the key issues and come up with a practical and very powerful system. One of the major insights they had was that keeping most of the data within the home and sending only small subsets out into the cloud for processing solved two problems at once: It eliminated the privacy concerns of using such a system, and it eliminated the huge bandwidth and data transmission costs that would be required if the raw data was sent to a central facility.Once the system is developed into a commercial product, Leeb says, it should cost only about $25 to $30 per home. "We're trying to lower the barriers to installation," says co-author John Donnal, and this noncontact sensor is simple enough for most home users to install on their own. "It just goes on with a zip tie," he says.William Singleton, an engineer at the U.S. Army Fort Devens Base Camp Integration Laboratory, who was not involved in this research, says this work "is an excellent example of how theoretical scientific and mathematical principles can be brought to bear on real world, practical, problem-solving applications." By using the MIT team's sensing system, he says, "significant potential savings in fuel, water, and equipment maintenance can be realized. This will provide increased options for the battlefield commander in accomplishing his mission, reduce the overall base camp logistics footprint, and ultimately save lives of warfighters involved in base camp sustainment and resupply." 

Wearables and IoT gadgets, featuring smart functions in much smaller form factors, pose battery challenges and headaches by their small size. ARM has made moves that might change the story of battery life of many wearables and other small devices, with its recent acquisition of two companies. Reports on Friday about ARM focused on its having acquired two low-power wireless communications companies.The technology could extend the battery life of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including wearables, by up to 60 per cent (compared to radio hardware that operates at 1.2 volts), said Daily Telegraph technology reporter Sophie Curtis. ("ARM claims that the Cordio radio technology system, operating below one volt, can extend battery life by 60 per cent, compared to radio hardware that operates at 1.2 volts," said the report. The two companies, Sunrise Micro Devices and Wicentric, said Curtis, will form the basis of its new Cordio portfolio. The result could brighten the picture for the development of low-power wireless communications for power-hungry devices.Aatif Sulleyman in TrustedReviews similarly observed how "Much of the power consumed by wearables is used up while communicating with other devices, such as smartphones. ARM wants to make this process less draining."ARM describes Cordio as a family of standards-based, low-power radio IP solutions. Each Cordio solution includes a pre-qualified, self-contained radio block, related link layer firmware, stack and profiles. It also carries guidelines for design, test, integration, qualification, and application development. ARM said semiconductor companies can benefit by having access to sub-volt radio solutions.Sunrise Micro Devices, said ARM, focuses on radio IP solutions and provides "a pre-qualified, self-contained radio block and related firmware to simplify radio deployment." Central to SMD radios is native sub-one volt operation. "Operating below one volt enables the radio to run much longer on batteries or harvested energy." Wicentric focuses on providing Bluetooth Smart software solutions. Curtis said Wicentric's Bluetooth Smart software solutions will run on the sub-one volt radios and help ease power consumption too.Paul Buckley in EE/Times said, "ARM is keen to make the Cordio solutions efficient enough to be powered using energy harvesting and sees SMD's sub-one volt Bluetooth radio IP as a vital ingredient in the design armory."The Cordio radio IP is being promoted as a fully integrated platform which includes transceiver, baseband, and link layer (LL) subsystem including firmware. The subsystem, said ARM, provides an "energy efficient, timing-independent interface to the host processor, enabling easy implementation of the stack and application layers. In addition, the subsystem intelligently controls the sleep and wake-up times of the host processor leading to lower system-wide power consumption."ARM said that "Core to all Cordio radio hardware is native sub-volt operation. Operating below 1 Volt enables the radio to 'sip' energy from a battery, thus greatly extending the device's life. In addition, it makes it easier to run without batteries by using energy harvesting technologies."In the bigger picture, "ARM is gradually building up a suite of IoT-focused solutions," said Buckley, "that address key stumbling blocks associated with developing commercially viable IoT products." 

IBM is telling the world about something quite ambitious: TrueNorth's neurons could revolutionize system architecture. Dharmendra S. Modha, IBM Fellow, has given us the overview of what TrueNorth is all about in his report in IBM Research.Six years ago, he said, IBM and university partners began their effort to build a brain-inspired computer.Phase 0 turned into Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3— from neuroscience to super computing to a new architecture, to a new programming language to algorithms, applications, and now, new chip, which is TrueNorth.He offered some numbers, which are bit daunting for those not accustomed to the "neuromorphic" world of computer research.Modha said, "we have shrunk the neurosynaptic core by 15-fold in area and 100-fold in power, and have tiled 4,096 cores via an on- IC chip network to create TrueNorth—with one million neurons and 256 million synapses."Cade Metz, Wired senior staff writer, went beyond the numbers to describe on Monday what he saw. "Dharmendra Modha walks me to the front of the room so I can see it up close. About the size of a bathroom medicine cabinet, it rests on a table against the wall, and thanks to the translucent plastic on the outside, I can see the computer chips and the circuit boards and the multi-colored lights on the inside. It looks like a prop from a '70s sci-fi movie, but Modha describes it differently. 'You're looking at a small rodent,' he says. He means the brain of a small rodent—or, at least, the digital equivalent."(The machine at the front of the room is really 48 separate machines, each built around its own TrueNorth processors, Metz wrote.)Not surprisingly, several websites took to the rodent comparison to report that IBM had come up with a "rat brain"-like chip that might power the phones of tomorrow.Modha, meanwhile, spelled out the applications that might result. "The architecture can solve a wide class of problems from vision, audition, and multi-sensory fusion."Making smartphones, as Wired put it, "hyper-smart"? That would be one effect. Modha said, "On one hand, with portable devices: think smart phones, sensor networks, self-driving automobiles, robots, public safety, medical imaging, real-time video analysis, signal processing, olfactory detection, and digital pathology. On the other hand, with synaptic supercomputers: —think multimedia processing on the cloud."Reporter Mike Murphy in Quartz on Tuesday talked about the technology itself which is turning the corner: "While current chips are excellent at analyzing information in sequential order, the new 'neuromorphic' types of chips Modha's team are working on are better suited to finding patterns in information—like the right side of the brain."Traditional chips follow instructions, whereas IBM's new chip manages 'spikes'—rather like spikes in electrical activity in an organic brain," Murphy said.TrueNorth, with all its comparisons, is not a brain but it is a step toward a digital brain. "Let's be clear: we have not built the brain, or any brain," said Modha in the IBM Research report. "We have built a computer that is inspired by the brain. The inputs to and outputs of this computer are spikes. Functionally, it transforms a spatio-temporal stream of input spikes into a spatio-temporal stream of output spikes."Collaboration with Samsung was critical in gaining access to their advanced 28nm foundry process, he said. This allowed balancing the low active power of the architecture with matching low power of the underlying silicon technology.He added, "I am immensely grateful to our 200+ collaborators since 2008—spanning eight IBM labs and fabs, five universities, one start-up, and two Department of Energy laboratories. Finally, DARPA's mandate, metrics, and investment were absolutely vital."