Karen Heyman

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Karen Heyman is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

RAG-Enabled AI Stops Hallucinations, Adds Sources
By Karen Heyman - 26 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

Many EDA companies have taken the first steps to incorporate generative AI into their tools, and in such tightly controlled environments GenAI appears to have great benefits. But its broader adoption has been delayed by its notorious inaccuracy, giving results that are often out of date, untrue, and unsourced. That's starting to change. GenAI is evolving so rapidly that these kinds of proble... » read more

CXL Thriving As Memory Link
By Karen Heyman - 16 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

CXL is emerging from a jumble of interconnect standards as a predictable way to connect memory to various processing elements, as well as to share memory resources within a data center. Compute Express Link is built on a PCI Express foundation and supported by nearly all the major chip companies. It is used to link CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and other purpose-built accelerators using serial communic... » read more

Photonics Could Reduce The Cost Of Lidar
By Karen Heyman - 05 Sep, 2024 - Comments: 0

Using light to move data over shorter distances is becoming more common, both because there is much more data to move around and because photons are faster and cooler than electrons. Using optical fiber for mission-critical communication is already well established. It has been the preferred PHY for long-haul communications for decades because it doesn’t suffer from the attenuation losses ... » read more

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups
By Karen Heyman - 29 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

Using AI in EDA is reinvigorating the whole tools industry, prompting established players to upgrade their tool offerings with AI/ML features, while drawing in startups trying to carve out differentiated approaches to fill unaddressed gaps with new tools and methodologies. Today’s new generation of entrepreneurs is comprised of both young post-grads with innovative ideas and industry veter... » read more

Voltage Drop Now Requires Dynamic Analysis
By Karen Heyman - 08 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

At one time a relatively infrequent occurrence, voltage drop is now a major impediment to reliability at advanced nodes. Decades ago, voltage drop was only an issue for very large and high-speed designs, where there was concern about supply lines delivering full voltage to transistors. As design margins have tightened in modern advanced designs, controlling voltage drop has become a requiremen... » read more

Post-Quantum Computing Threatens Fundamental Transport Protocols
By Karen Heyman - 01 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

The Transport Level Security (TLS) protocol is one of the few rock-steady spots in the rapidly changing computing industry, but that's about to change as quantum computers threaten traditional encryption schemes. Because TLS is fundamental to network communications, including allowing Internet of Things (IoT) devices to function properly, researchers already are exploring both hardware and s... » read more

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

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