John McHale, Editorial Director, OpenSystems Media

• Dean Holman named as President/Executive Director of VITA

  

  FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz. VITA, the trade association for standard computing architectures serving critical embedded-systems industries, announced that Dean Holman is VITA's President and Executive Director, effective February 1, 2022. Jerry Gipper, the previous Executive Director, will continue as VITA’s Marketing Director.

  John McHale, Editorial Director

• Unmanned aircraft leverage PC/104, COM Express, and other small form factors

  

  Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) continue to shrink in size, as do their payloads, requiring system designers to leverage small-form-factor, embedded-computing standards like PC/104, COM Express, and others.

  John McHale, Editorial Director

• DNA marking of ICs still causing discontent

  John McHale, Editorial Director

  The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) caused quite a stir among authorized integrated circuit (IC) suppliers and original component manufacturers (OCMs) in 2013 when - in an effort to mitigate counterfeits - it essentially required them to mark their Federal Supply Class (FSC) 5962 IC parts with plant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to tag them as authentic. I wrote about the controversy in this space in our December issue with a column titled: "DNA marking for counterfeit parts: problem solver or money pit," that had comments from the DLA and from authorized suppliers affected by the mandate.