Listen to the Podcast:
Synopsys Inc. released new artificial intelligence tools on Wednesday. These tools are meant to help get better results faster in the different stages of making computer chips.
Companies use software made by Synopsys to design computer chips. Transistors are very small on/off switches that are packed into modern chips by the tens of billions. How the transistors are arranged on the chip greatly affects its cost and performance, so designers use software from companies like Synopsys to help.
Three years ago, Synopsys released an AI tool for one part of the chip design process. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and ST Microelectronics are among the companies that use the system.
The tools Synopsys released on Wednesday at its annual user conference in Santa Clara, California cover the chip design process. These AI tools cover a significantly larger portion of the process. They are meant to help engineers find bugs in their designs, test sample chips from manufacturing partners, and, once mass production has started, increase the number of chips that are free of bugs.
Synopsys also released a tool on Wednesday that makes it easier to move designs for analog chips from one manufacturing partner to another. Usually, these kinds of moves are expensive and take a long time.
Sassine Ghazi, president and chief operating officer of Synopsys, said that a tight chip supply chain and restrictions on doing business in the U.S. is causing chip executives to look for more options.
“Every CEO was looking for a different way to do things. No one wants to be surprised if someone tells them they can’t use Chinese or Taiwanese “Ghazi said.
Synopsys is racing its biggest competitor, Cadence Design Systems, to add AI to chip design software first. Some of the tools that Synopsys released on Wednesday are catching up to those made by Cadence. But Karl Freund, the chief analyst at Cambrian AI research, stated that Synopsys is in the lead because more than 100 chips built by customers who used its AI tools have already been put on the market. Karl Freund made this statement.
They surpass Cadence, especially in light of what has transpired in terms of physical design, according to Freund. By the end of the year, “I believe they’ll probably be at 1,000 (finished chip designs)”
