According to Synopsys, for the first time, engineers will be able to use AI at every stage of chip design, from system architecture to design and manufacturing, and to access the solutions in the cloud.
Renesas is already using Synopsys.ai and managed to cut product development times by weeks while enhancing silicon performance and reducing costs.
The Synopsys.ai EDA suite includes a number of AI-driven solutions, including: digital design space optimisation to achieve power, performance and area (PPA) targets, and boost productivity (used in 100 production tape-outs by January 2023); analogue design automation for rapid migration of designs across process nodes; verification coverage closure and regression analysis for faster functional testing closure, higher coverage and predictive bug detection; automated test generation that is resulted in fewer, optimised test patterns for silicon defect coverage and faster time to results; and manufacturing solutions to accelerate development of lithography models with high accuracy to achieve the highest yield.
"Increased complexity, engineering resource constraints and tighter delivery windows were challenges crying out for a full AI-driven EDA software stack from architectural exploration to design and manufacturing – and we've delivered it," said Shankar Krishnamoorthy, GM of Synopsys EDA Group. "With Synopsys.ai solutions, customers will be able to search design solution spaces across multiple domains. Already, 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."
Synopsys.ai tools are now used by 9 of the top 10 semiconductor companies.
With each design project, the solutions' AI engines continually train on unique data sets, allowing them to become more adept at optimising results over time.
"Meeting quality and time-to-market constraints is fast becoming difficult using traditional human-in-the-loop techniques due to the ramp in design complexity," said Takahiro Ikenobe, IP Development Director, Shared R&D Core IP Division at Renesas. "Using AI-driven verification with Synopsys VCS, part of Synopsys.ai EDA suite, we've achieved up to 10x improvement in reducing functional coverage holes and up to 30% increase in IP verification productivity demonstrating the ability of AI to help us address the challenges of our increasingly complex designs."
"AI has the potential to reshape virtually every field, and its benefits for the semiconductor industry are hard to overstate," said Vivek K. Singh, VP, Advanced Technology Group at NVIDIA. "We're working alongside leading companies like Synopsys to accelerate and improve production and open new frontiers for the industry."
According to industry analyst Patrick Moorhead from Moor Insights & Strategy, "AI is transforming the semiconductor industry, enabling engineers to create more complex chips that humans unaided would be unable to produce. 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 clearly taking the lead in infusing AI throughout the chip development flow and we should applaud their investment in the industry's future."
