Adam Kovac

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Adam Kovac is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Integrating Data From Design, Manufacturing, And The Field
By Adam Kovac - 13 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

Chip design is starting to include more options to ensure chips behave reliably in the field, boosting the ability to tweak both hardware and software as chips age. The basic problem is that as dimensions become smaller, and as more features are added into devices — especially with heterogeneous assemblies of chiplets running some type of AI — the potential for thermally induced structur... » read more

Multi-Die Design Complicates Data Management
By Adam Kovac - 27 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

The continued unbundling of SoCs into multi-die packages is increasing the complexity of those designs and the amount of design data that needs to be managed, stored, sorted, and analyzed. Simulations and test runs are generating increasing amounts of information. That raises questions about which data needs to be saved and for how long. During the design process, engineers now must wrestle ... » read more

What Scares Chip Engineers About Generative AI
By Adam Kovac - 26 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

Experts At The Table: LLMs and other generative AI programs are a long way away from being able to design entire chips on their own from scratch, but the emergence of the tech has still raised some genuine concerns. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of experts, which included Rod Metcalfe, product management group director at Cadence; Syrus Ziai, vice-president of engineering at E... » read more

Automotive Security Shifts To The System Level
By Adam Kovac - 06 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

Cars are getting smarter, more complicated, and more vulnerable to cyberattacks. As the amount of semiconductor and software content continues to increase, so does the number of over-the-air updates and connections to edge-based servers and services, adding a variety of new vectors for attacks. Properly securing vehicles requires engineers to first identify all the possible connection points... » read more

AI In Data Management Has Limits
By Adam Kovac - 03 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

AI algorithms are being integrated into a growing number of EDA tools to automate different aspects of data management, but they also are forcing discussions about just how much decision-making should be turned over to machines and when that should happen. The ability of AI to sort through enormous amounts of design data to find patterns, both good and bad, is well recognized at this point. ... » read more

Power Budgets Optimized By Managing Glitch Power
By Adam Kovac - 16 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 0

“Waste not, want not,” says the old adage, and in general, that’s good advice to live by. But in the realm of chip design, wasting power is a fact of physics. Glitch power – power that gets expended due to delays in gates and/or wires – can account for up to 40% of the power budget in advanced applications like data center servers. Even in less high-powered circuits, such as those fou... » read more

AI Won’t Replace Subject Matter Experts
By Adam Kovac - 15 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 0

Experts at The Table: The emergence of LLMs and other forms of AI has sent ripples through a number of industries, raising fears that many jobs could be on the chopping block, to be replaced by automation. Whether that’s the case in semiconductors, where machine learning has become an integral part of the design process, remains to be seen. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of e... » read more

How Software-Defined Vehicles Change Auto Chip Design
By Adam Kovac - 09 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 0

The shift to software-defined vehicles is changing nearly every aspect of automotive design, from what hardware is added into vehicles, when it gets added, and what gets left behind. Moving key features to software rather than hardware allows carmakers to bring new features to market faster, at a lower cost, and to modify those features more quickly. It is also expected to drive up the value... » read more

ISO 26262’s Importance Widens Beyond Automotive
By Adam Kovac - 09 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 0

The ISO 26262 standard, which has become a mainstay since the trend toward vehicle electrification really took root a decade ago, is starting to gain traction in markets outside of automotive chip and system design. At the center of this expansion is a focus on safety under a variety of conditions — extreme temperatures, unexpected vibration, or a collision that is unavoidable. This includ... » read more

Chiplet Interconnects Add Power And Signal Integrity Issues
By Adam Kovac - 12 Dec, 2024 - Comments: 0

The flexibility and scalability offered by chiplets make them an increasingly attractive choice over planar SoCs, but the rollout of increasingly heterogeneous assemblies adds a variety of new challenges around the processing and movement of data. Nearly all of the chiplets in use today were designed in-house by large systems companies and IDMs. Going forward, third-party chiplets will begin... » read more

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