International Technology Roadmap for semiconductors (ITRS) 2012 roadmap has address the concept of functional diversification under the title “More than Moor( MtM). The MtM approach typically allows for the non-digital functionalities (e.g., RF communication, sensors, actuators) to migrate from the system board-level into a particular package-level (SiP) or chip-level (SoC) system solution. Within the next decade, it is expected that the number of items of common use that would get connected to the Internet would be an order of magnitude higher than the population of humans. This is exciting mainly because it means that every object we use would become “smarter” – i.e. that they would be able to sense their context, analyse information locally, co-ordinate with each other, communicate with remote analytics services and take intelligent actions. Recent System on Chip (SoC) solutions released from a number of semiconductor companies like ALTERA, Xylinx, etc claim to meet precisely these requirements. Also there are various Storage Class Memories being prototyped in research laboratories like Fe RAM, STT-MRAM, PCRAM, Ferroelctric memories, Nanomechnical memories , Radox Memories with 3-D integration for high capacity and endurance.

The reality is that the IoT allows for virtually endless opportunities and connections to take place, many of which we can't even think of or fully understand the impact of today. It's not hard to see how and why the IoT is such a hot topic today; it certainly opens the door to a lot of opportunities but also to many challenges. Security is a big issue that is oftentimes brought up. With billions of devices being connected together, what can people do to make sure that their information stays secure? Will someone be able to hack into your toaster and thereby get access to your entire network? The IoT also opens up companies all over the world to more security threats. Then we have the issue of privacy and data sharing. This is a hot-button topic even today, so one can only imagine how the conversation and concerns will escalate when we are talking about many billions of devices being connected. Another issue that many companies specifically are going to be faced with is around the massive amounts of data that all of these devices are going to produce. Companies need to figure out a way to store, track, analyze and make sense of the vast amounts of data that will be generated.