Adam Kovac

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Adam Kovac is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

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

Tools Needed To Track, Catalog Hardware Vulnerabilities
By Adam Kovac - 05 Dec, 2024 - Comments: 0

Monitoring for cyberattacks is a key component of hardware-based security, but what happens afterward is equally important. Logging and cataloging identified hardware vulnerabilities to ensure they are not repeated is essential for security. In fact, thousands of weak points have been identified as part of the chip design process, and even posted publicly online. Nevertheless, many companies... » read more

Where Cryptography Is Headed
By Adam Kovac - 05 Dec, 2024 - Comments: 0

Reports began surfacing in October that Chinese researchers used a quantum computer to crack military-grade AES 256-bit encryption. Those reports turned out to be wrong, but that did little to dampen concerns about what would happen if it was true. The looming threat of quantum computers breaking today's encryption, and the stockpiling of encrypted data in preparation for a time when it can ... » read more

How AI Is Transforming System Design
By Adam Kovac - 26 Nov, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts At The Table: ChatGPT and other LLMs have attracted most of the attention in recent years, but other forms of AI have long been incorporated into design workflows. The technology has become so common that many designers may not even realize it’s a part of the tools they use every day. But its adoption is spreading deeper into tools and methodologies. Semiconductor Engineering sat down... » read more

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