Adam Kovac

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Adam Kovac is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Higher Density, More Data Create New Bottlenecks In AI Chips
By Adam Kovac - 12 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

Data movement is becoming a bigger problem at advanced nodes and in advanced packaging due to denser circuitry, more physical effects that can affect the integrity of signals or the devices themselves, and a significant increase in data from AI and machine learning. Just shrinking features in a design is no longer sufficient, given the scaling mismatch between SRAM-based L1 cache and digital... » read more

Security Improving For Low-Cost Hardware
By Adam Kovac - 05 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

Security has been a priority in software for decades, but only recently has it begun catching up in chips — particularly those in inexpensive devices. The disconnect is that while these devices are low-cost, they often are connected to the same networks as more sophisticated devices and repositories for valuable data. It's not unusual for the entry point in ransomware or distributed denial... » read more

Edge Devices Require New Security Approaches
By Adam Kovac - 29 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

The diversity of connected devices and chips at the edge — the vaguely defined middle ground between the end point and the cloud — is significantly widening the potential attack surface and creating more opportunities for cyberattacks. The edge build-out has been underway for at least the past half-decade, largely driven by an explosion in data and increasing demands to process that data... » read more

As EDA Processes Becomes More Secure, So Do Chips
By Adam Kovac - 26 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Security is becoming a much bigger concern within chips and electronic systems, but the actual implementation remains something of an afterthought, which limits its effectiveness. There are many pieces to the security puzzle on the chip design side that go well beyond just securing the hardware or the IP. The EDA tools themselves need to be secure, as well, and so does the user data within t... » read more

Hardware Security Set To Grow Quickly
By Adam Kovac - 22 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts At The Table: The hardware security ecosystem is young and relatively small but could see a major boom in the coming years. As companies begin to acknowledge how vulnerable their hardware is, industry standards are being set, but must leave room for engineers to experiment. As part of an effort to determine the best way forward, Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of experts... » read more

Defining Chip Threat Models To Identify Security Risks
By Adam Kovac - 01 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts At The Table: As hardware weaknesses have become a major target for attackers, the race to find new ways to strengthen chip security has begun to heat up. But one-size does not fit all solution. To figure out what measures need to be taken, a proper threat model must be assessed. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of experts at the Design Automation Conference in San Franci... » read more

IC Power Optimization Required, But More Difficult To Achieve
By Adam Kovac - 18 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Power optimization is playing an increasingly vital role in chip and chip and system designs, but it's also becoming much harder to achieve as transistor density and system complexity continue to grow. This is especially evident with advanced packages, chiplets, and high-performance chips, all of which are becoming more common in complex designs. Inside data centers, racks of servers are str... » read more

Securing Data In Heterogeneous Designs
By Adam Kovac - 02 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Data security is becoming a bigger concern as chips are disaggregated into chiplets and various third-party IP blocks. There is no single solution that works for all designs, and no single tool or methodology that addresses everything in any design. Data is being transmitted across time zones, political borders, and even across multiple designs. Laws and the need to comply with standards may... » read more

Temperature: A Growing Concern For Chip Security Experts
By Adam Kovac - 13 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

While everyone in the semiconductor industry wants to have the hottest new product, having that type of temperature manifest in a literal sense poses a threat not just to product stability and performance but to the security of the chips themselves. Temperature has become an object of fascination to security researchers due to the vagaries of how the physical properties of heat affect perfor... » read more

Why It’s So Hard To Secure AI Chips
By Adam Kovac - 06 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

Demand for high-performance chips designed specifically for AI applications is spiking, driven by massive interest in generative AI at the edge and in the data center, but the rapid growth in this sector also is raising concerns about the security of these devices and the data they process. Generative AI — whether it's OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or xAI’s Grok — sifts thr... » read more

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