Highlights:

  • Engineers can now take advantage of AI support at every stage of the chip design process, from system architecture to design and manufacturing, according to the company, thanks to Synopsys.ai.
  • Innovative developments like human-like chatbots, surgical robots, and self-driving cars are made possible by AI in particular.

Manufacturer of semiconductor design software, Synopsys Inc. recently unveiled a broader range of AI tools to support the design, validation, and testing of cutting-edge computer chips.

Engineers can now take advantage of AI support at every stage of the chip design process, from system architecture to design and manufacturing, because of Synopsys.ai, according to the company.

As a leader in electronic design automation, Synopsys offers chipmakers the software, hardware, and services necessary to define, plan, design, implement, and verify next-generation semiconductors before manufacturing them.

The pressure on today’s chip manufacturers to create ever-more powerful chips to speed the development of high-performance computing, analytics, and AI is growing. Innovative developments like human-like chatbots, surgical robots, and self-driving cars are made possible by AI in particular. It is one of the key technologies influencing the demand for more complex chips, and it can be used to produce those more potent chips.

According to Synopsys, its Synopsys.ai EDA suite can speed up chip design with solutions for functional verification and silicon testing, and it will soon add more capabilities. Arvind Narayanan, senior director of product line management at Synopsys EDA Group, described how AI could help with many time-consuming iterative tasks necessary to create higher-quality chips in a blog post.

Narayanan said, “AI technologies known as machine learning and reinforcement learning can take on repetitive tasks such as design space exploration, verification coverage and regression analytics, and test program generation. This frees up a substantial amount of time for engineering teams, allowing these experts to focus on value-added tasks such as differentiating their products and quickly creating new features or derivative designs.”

DSO.ai, which automates the process of improving the power, performance, and area of chip designs, is one of the three main Synopsys.ai components. Verification engineers can find bugs in their designs more quickly and reach their coverage closure goals with the aid of VSO.ai.

According to Synopsys, the fact that a digital chip design can operate in virtually infinite design state spaces makes AI advantageous. Therefore, humans need to confirm that it will always work as intended.

Narayanan said, “The regression process could run for days, eating up compute resources through thousands of tests. Often, the ‘last mile’ of closure ends up being very labor intensive, with manual analysis on huge amounts of data limited in yielding actionable insights. VSO.ai revitalizes this process, examining the RTL to infer coverage while also highlighting areas where coverage is needed, saving substantial time and ensuring a high ROI on the tests.”

The final element is TSO.ai, which aids in automating the silicon test process by evaluating the defect coverage, pattern count, and runtime of a new chip design using tools for automatic test pattern generation.

According to Shankar Krishnamoorthy, General Manager of Synopsys EDA Group, an AI-driven EDA software stack is urgently needed, given the challenges of rising complexity, constrained engineering resources, and condensed delivery windows. He added, “With Synopsys.ai technology, our customers’ ability to search design solution spaces across multiple domains is in hyperdrive. They’re finding optimal results far faster as the AI learns run-to-run and it’s transforming their ability to meet and beat tough design and productivity targets.”

Nine of the top 10 semiconductor companies in the world have already implemented the Synopsys.ai suite, the company said. These customers have reported a 10-fold increase in verification productivity and significantly decreased silicon testing costs. They have been able to cut costs and the number of weeks it takes to develop a product.

According to Moor Insights and amp; Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead, AI has revolutionized the semiconductor design industry by enabling engineers to produce more complex chips that people alone would never be able to make. He said, “The horizons AI will open up are hard to imagine, only we know we’ll be able to move faster and do more than we can now. Synopsys is now clearly taking the lead in infusing AI throughout the chip development flow, and we should applaud their investment in the industry’s future.”