Karen Heyman

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Karen Heyman is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Floor-Planning Evolves Into The Chiplet Era
By Karen Heyman - 25 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

3D-ICs and heterogeneous chiplets will require significant changes in physical layout tools, where the placement of chiplets and routing of signals can have a big impact on overall system performance and reliability. EDA vendors are well aware of the issues and working on solutions. Top on the list of challenges for 3D-ICs is thermal dissipation. Logic typically generates the most heat, and ... » read more

Data Center Thermal Management Improves
By Karen Heyman - 18 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Thermal issues are plaguing semiconductor design at every level, from chips developed with single-digit nanometer processes to 100,000-square-foot data centers. The underlying cause is too many devices or services that require increasing amounts of power, and too few opportunities for the resulting heat to dissipate. “Everybody wants to try to do more in a small volume of space,” said St... » read more

Thermal Challenges Multiply In Automotive, Embedded Devices
By Karen Heyman - 02 Jul, 2024 - Comments: 0

Embedding chips into stacked-die assemblies is creating thermal dissipation challenges that can reduce the reliability and lifespan of these devices, a growing problem as chipmakers begin cramming chiplets into advanced packages with thinner substrates between them. In the past, nearly all of these complex designs were used in tightly controlled environments, such as a large data center, whe... » read more

Design Flow Challenged By 3D-IC Process, Thermal Variation
By Karen Heyman - 27 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

3D-ICs are proving a challenge even for designers accustomed to dealing with power and performance tradeoffs, but they are considered an inevitable migration path for leading-edge designs due to the compute demands of AI and the continual shrinking of digital logic. 3D-ICs are widely viewed as the way to continue scaling beyond the limits of planar SoCs, and a way to add more heterogeneous d... » read more

New Approaches Needed For Power Management
By Karen Heyman - 13 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

Power is becoming a bigger concern as the amount of data being processed continues to grow, forcing chipmakers and systems companies to rethink compute architectures from the end point all the way to the data center. There is no simple fix to this problem. More data is being collected, moved, and processed, requiring more power at every step, and more attention to physical effects such as he... » read more

Toward A Software-Defined Hardware World
By Karen Heyman - 06 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

Software-defined hardware may be the ultimate Shift Left approach as chip design grows closer to true co-design than ever with potential capacity baked into the hardware, and greater functionality delivered over the air or via a software update. This marks another advance in the quest for lower power, one that’s so revolutionary that it’s upending traditional ideas about model-based systems... » read more

Running More Efficient AI/ML Code With Neuromorphic Engines
By Karen Heyman - 16 May, 2024 - Comments: 0

Neuromorphic engineering is finally getting closer to market reality, propelled by the AI/ML-driven need for low-power, high-performance solutions. Whether current initiatives result in true neuromorphic devices, or whether devices will be inspired by neuromorphic concepts, remains to be seen. But academic and industry researchers continue to experiment in the hopes of achieving significant ... » read more

SRAM Security Concerns Grow
By Karen Heyman - 09 May, 2024 - Comments: 0

SRAM security concerns are intensifying as a combination of new and existing techniques allow hackers to tap into data for longer periods of time after a device is powered down. This is particularly alarming as the leading edge of design shifts from planar SoCs to heterogeneous systems in package, such as those used in AI or edge processing, where chiplets frequently have their own memory hi... » read more

Fundamental Issues In Computer Vision Still Unresolved
By Karen Heyman - 02 May, 2024 - Comments: 1

Given computer vision’s place as the cornerstone of an increasing number of applications from ADAS to medical diagnosis and robotics, it is critical that its weak points be mitigated, such as the ability to identify corner cases or if algorithms are trained on shallow datasets. While well-known bloopers are often the result of human decisions, there are also fundamental technical issues that ... » read more

Design Considerations In Photonics
By Karen Heyman - 01 May, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about what CMOS and photonics engineers need to know to successfully collaborate, with James Pond, fellow at Ansys; Gilles Lamant, distinguished engineer at Cadence; and Mitch Heins, business development manager for photonic solutions at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To view part one of this discussion,... » read more

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