At Cadence, we have recently switched over our printer system. Before, everyone in an office was hooked up to a communal printer that when you print something, you have to run to the printer down the hall to pick it up. God forbid it is something sensitive, or someone is printing out a book before you in the queue, or you forget to pick it up. But now, when you hit “print”, you can leisurely go to the printer, scan your employee ID card, and the items in your personal queue print right in front of you. So, at least at Cadence headquarters, our employee IDs serve three purposes: to identify us as employees, to open certain doors around campus, and to pick up your printed materials from the printer. This makes sense. Now, what if there were some way to use our employee IDs to pay for what we purchase in the cafeteria? Seems like an easy jump; all we need to do is scan our ID at checkout, and the amount is deducted, maybe even directly from our paychecks! Or another thought: the shipping department could be hooked into the system, so we could send personal packages and pay for it with a swipe of our cards. Here’s another idea: what if, instead of needing passwords to log into our computer accounts, our laptops were equipped with a little ID reader, and all we had to do was scan our ID, and we could go ahead with our work? Company IDs could be used for a lot of things. But how easy it is to lose this ID or forget it at home, or it gets mangled in the car door. And what happens if our ID is lost or stolen? About a year ago, the company 32M in Wisconsin presented a solution: they offered to implant tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips into their employees’ hands, between their thumb and forefinger, for identification purposes. No more losing your company ID! CEO Todd Westby said in their press release that the company believes the technology will soon be ubiquitous: We foresee the use of RFID technology to drive everything from making purchases in our office break room market, opening doors, use of copy machines, logging into our office computers, unlocking phones, sharing business cards, storing medical/health information, and used as payment at other RFID terminals. Eventually, this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc. Now, this may or may not be true. What I do know is that the other day I heard another news story on NPR about how this technology is taking Sweden by storm. (Great story, check it out!) Maddy Savage reported that thousands of Swedes have had these microchips embedded in their hands to access their homes, offices, gyms, storing emergency contact details, social media profiles, or even buying rail tickets. The main company providing the chips and the service to embed them is Biohax International , based in Sweden, with Jowan Österlund as the founder and CEO. (And who knows, maybe they used Cadence Virtuoso technology to design the thing!) At 2mm × 12mm, it’s the size of a grain of rice. According to Maddy Savage’s story, Österlund believes there are two key reasons that these microchips have taken off in Sweden. First, the country has a long history of embracing new technologies before many others and is quickly moving toward becoming a cashless society. (Only one in four people living in Sweden uses cash at least once a week. And, according to the country’s central bank, the Riksbank, the proportion of retail cash transactions has dropped from around 40 percent in 2010 to about 15 percent today.) Österlund’s second theory is that Swedes are less concerned about data privacy than people in other countries, thanks to a high level of trust for Swedish companies, banks, large organizations, and government institutions. Now, this is all very well and good for the Swedes, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the same can be said for the rest of the world. The obvious convenience is what is driving the Swedes to embrace this technology, but there is so much more to worry about—these implants are ripe for unintended consequences. Just as a fitness tracking app accidentally gave away the location of secret US army bases (reported in The Guardian last January), who knows what the ramifications of using RFID chips could be. Health is a big question: Do we know the long-term effects of having something inside of you emit a signal to an external receiver? And then there’s privacy: Assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, how do you know a device like this won’t be used to track you? It says on my Social Security card that it isn’t meant to be a means of identification. But that’s exactly how it is used in our daily life. Will we get to the point that a person simply can’t say “no” to having this device implanted, just as it’s awfully difficult to get around in America without a driver’s license or passport? Is resistance futile? —Meera In other news, Cadence received two Customer Choice awards for best paper at the TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum that took place on October 3 rd . Jerry Zhao from Cadence and Shane Stelmach from Texas Instruments won for their presentation on the Tools track for Estimation of Electromigration Reliability – Analyzing Safety-Critical Reliability Needs Using TSMC Statistical EM Budgeting (SEB) . David Burnell and Art Schaldenbrand from Cadence and Frank Cano from TI presented on Automotive IP – Design Methods for Robust Aging Assessment and Validation Satisfying Safety-Critical Reliability Needs . These awards were voted on by show attendees and will be presented to the winners next month. Congratulations to Jerry, David, and Art! Source Materials 32M Microchips Employees Company-Wide Biohax International 'Body Hacking' Movement Rises Ahead Of Moral Answers Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases Technology Gets Under The Skin The payment behaviour of the Swedish population Thousands Of Swedes Are Inserting Microchips Under Their Skin Wisconsin Company Offers To Implant Chips In Its Employees![]()
↧