IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2018 - 3

From
the Editor
chai Wah Wu
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine

elcome to a new volume of the Circuits and
Systems Magazine. 2018 is designated by the
UK government as the Year of Engineering to
promote engineering and inspire the next generation of
engineers [1]. As I have said for many years, today is the
best time to be an engineer. With respect to engineering
activities CAS members are engaged in, we are in the
middle of several disruptive trends that will change dramatically the way we do things. As is usually the case,
when one door closes, another one opens.
First of all, cybersecurity concerns are reaching a fever
pitch due to several high-profile security breaches around
the world [2] and new technologies such as blockchain are
emerging to combat this threat [3]. What is notable is that
many of these security breaches are preventable and are
due to human error. This suggests that more automated detection and prevention of cybersecurity threats are needed
which brings me to the next point. Artificial Intelligence
(AI) is starting to appear in every aspect of our lives, with
connectionism leading the charge by making a comeback.
Although we have seen warnings from people such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk about the dangers of AI [4],
I believe AI is the result of humankind's incessant drive to
find tools to improve our lives, starting from the primitive
tools such as stone scrapers, to the invention of the wheel,
the steam engine, the airplane, and other important inventions. All these tools have the capacity to be constructive
as well as destructive and we need to ensure the pros far
outweigh the cons. If we define AI broadly as man-made
mechanisms to emulate aspects of human intelligence,
then the CAS community has been engaged in some components of AI for a long time. For instance, feedback control mimics the way we steer a car or a ship by monitoring
the deviation from the desired course and continuously attempting to minimize it, space-invariant filtering in image
processing is like the way the retina extracts features from
visual information and Fourier analysis is similar to the
way the ear processes sounds via spectral decomposition1.
1
Although image processing and Fourier analysis may predate our understanding of the human retina and cochlea.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCAS.2017.2785416
Date of publication: 9 February 2018

First quarter 2018

The resurgence of neural networks based AI is partly
due to increased availability of data and computer processing power. But even as the amount of data that is generated and analyzed is increasing at an ever-increasing
rate with no signs of slowing down, the rate of increase
in processor efficiency is declining. We are continuing to
see Moore's law becoming unattainable in general purpose computing [5], but are also witnessing the rise of
specialized processors [6] suited for specialized workloads such as AI and the possible replacement of current
semiconductor technologies with quantum devices [7].
One interesting irony is that quantum computing promises to both render security measures such as public
key cryptography obsolete and at the same time provide
mechanisms for unbreakable encryption.
These and other examples throughout history show
that when current technologies are becoming obsolete
or unable to deal with difficult problems, new technologies emerge to tackle this challenge. We hope to record
some of these innovations in the pages of the magazine
and I would like to thank the editorial board and the
IEEE Periodicals department for helping me maintain
the high standards of the magazine and fill it with interesting articles.
References
[1] UK Space Agency. (2017, Nov. 16). 2018 will be the year of engineering. [Online]. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2018will-be-the-year-of-engineering
[2] L. Graham. (2017, Sept. 20). The number of devastating cyberattacks
is surging: And it's likely to get much worse. [Online]. Available: https://
www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/cyberattacks-are-surging-and-more-datarecords-are-stolen.html
[3] O. Barzilay. (2017, Aug. 21). 3 Ways blockchain is revolutionizing cybersecurity. [Online]. Available: https://www.forbes.com/
sites/omribarzilay/2017/08/21/3-ways-blockchain-is-revolutionizingcybersecurity
[4] M. Brown. (2017, Nov. 2). Stephen Hawking fears A.I. may replace
humans, and he's not alone. [Online]. Available: https://www.inverse
.com/article/38054-stephen-hawking-ai-fears
[5] J. Markoff. (2016, May 4). Moore's law running out of room, tech
looks for a successor. [Online]. Available: https://www.nytime.com/
2016/05/05/technology/moores-law-running-out-of-room-tech-looksfor-a-successor.html
[6] T. P. Morgan. (2017, May 10). Nvidia's tesla volta GPU is the beast
of the datacenter. [Online]. Available: https://www.nextplatform
.com/2017/05/10/nvidias-tesla-volta-gpu-beast-datacenter/
[7] Quantum computing roadmap overview LA-UR-04-1778, Quantum
Information Science and Technology Roadmapping Project. [Online].
Available: http://qist.lanl.gov/pdfs/rm_intro.pdf.
ieee circuits and systems magazine

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2018-will-be-the-year-of-engineering https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2018-will-be-the-year-of-engineering https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/cyberattacks-are-surging-and-more-data-records-are-stolen.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/cyberattacks-are-surging-and-more-data-records-are-stolen.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/cyberattacks-are-surging-and-more-data-records-are-stolen.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribarzilay/2017/08/21/3-ways-blockchain-is-revolutionizing-cybersecurity https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribarzilay/2017/08/21/3-ways-blockchain-is-revolutionizing-cybersecurity https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribarzilay/2017/08/21/3-ways-blockchain-is-revolutionizing-cybersecurity https://www.inverse.com/article/38054-stephen-hawking-ai-fears https://www.inverse.com/article/38054-stephen-hawking-ai-fears https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/technology/moores-law-running-out-of-room-tech-looks-for-a-successor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/technology/moores-law-running-out-of-room-tech-looks-for-a-successor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/technology/moores-law-running-out-of-room-tech-looks-for-a-successor.html https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/05/10/nvidias-tesla-volta-gpu-beast-datacenter/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/05/10/nvidias-tesla-volta-gpu-beast-datacenter/ http://qist.lanl.gov/pdfs/rm_intro.pdf

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2018