Is "designing AI chips with AI" feasible?



This article is based on an interview undertaken by FusionMedium's  technology 
online media, TechOrange, and published with permission: 

Semiconductor chips have become the core for driving innovation in the edge 
computing of tomorrow. Smartphones were the world's first stage of entry into 
the Era of Intelligence. As reliance on electronic products continues to grow, 
how to design higher performing and cost-effective chips, and to do so in a 
shorter time, has become a key challenge for IC designers.

Synopsys is an S&P 500 company and has a long history of being a global leader 
in IC electronic design automation (EDA) and IC interface IP. The company is 
dedicated to providing the best "Silicon to Software" solutions.

EDA has greatly increased the speed at which technology evolves, while the 
number of transistors deployed in a chip has risen sharply

With the simple and rapid dissemination of knowledge, human technology has 
evolved so much that the words that used to be printed by the Gutenberg 
printing press have now become digital zeros and ones, logical gates, and tools 
to miniaturize these technologies in tiny silicon chips, and that tool is 
Electronic Design Automation (EDA).

The emergence of EDA has greatly increased the speed at which technology is 
developed. Li pointed out that semiconductor technology became a key player in 
all kinds of electronic devices and systems, although IC circuits were still 
designed manually at that time.

Li recalled the early 1990s when there were only 12 million transistors in 
telephone chipsets and engineers were still drawing circuits by hand, taking a 
year and a half to complete the design of a single chip. "The number of 
transistors in cell phone chips on the market today runs between 1.2 billion 
and 2 billion, and each transistor circuit has to be connected correctly for 
the phone to work, which is virtually impossible were the old design method 
were still in use. EDA makes this possible. "

EDA design involves three processes to meet the needs for higher performance, 
lower cost and faster time-to-market

The first step of EDA is to describe the circuit, and the second step is to 
build a circuit model, simulate operation, analyze feasibility, optimize 
performance, and finally reach automation.

This process is similar to the current AI machine learning algorithm, which 
also collects a large amount of data, simulates it into a neural-like network, 
and then trains the model so that the system can make inferences and predict 
behavior, and design corresponding actions.

Li continued his description, "AI technology can be applied to EDA in every 
aspect of IC design, from specification, functional and circuit design, to 
real-world verification, to IC production and testing, in a way that human 
beings cannot. The key indicator of IC design is PPA (Power, Performance, 
Area), which means less power, higher performance and more transistors packed 
into the same geometry.

In addition to PPA, various considerations such as information security and 
stability, among others, must now be included, which makes IC design more and 
more complex.

The era of "designing AI chips with AI" is coming

As a global EDA leader, Synopsys launched an AI-enabled EDA platform in 2020 
and joined Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to 
establish the AI Chip Design Lab. The firm then launched the public AI 
system-on-chip (SoC), to assist IC designers in shortening the development 
timeline. "If we continued to use the old design method, it would take 100 
engineers more than three years to complete the design of an AI accelerator for 
social networking sites. After leveraging the AI SoC, the Taiwan start-up team 
needed only 30 engineers and completed the product design within a year and a 
half."

The AI on Chip Industry Cooperation Strategic Alliance established by the Smart 
Electronics Industry Promotion Office (SIPO) of the Industrial Development 
Bureau, connects the upstream and downstream supply chains of global industries 
and assists semiconductor, AI, and IoT manufacturers in establishing 
international partnerships, giving Taiwan's manufacturers an opportunity to 
explore innovative business opportunities and enhance international 
competitiveness.

Lastly, Li said that the global industry relies more and more heavily on ICs as 
we enter the Era of Intelligence. Statistics show that future market demand for 
IC design engineers will be 1000 times higher than it is now. To meet this 
demand, AI is imperative. The era of designing AI chips with AI has come and IC 
designers must ready themselves for this trend in order to remain competitive 
in the industrial environment of tomorrow."

Media Contact
Shine Chiu
shine@fusionmedium.com
+886 919-031-282

SOURCE: Fusionmedium