The future of chip design will be driven by AI, according to AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, with AMD already using artificial intelligence (AI) to design its chips. Lisa told the world that AI will dominate chip design, something she said during the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held in Shanghai, China recently.

Lisa Su also underlined the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to drive improved hardware design, given that AMD is already tapping AI in semiconductor design, testing, and verification of its chips. But in the future, AMD plans to use generative AI to help design future chips. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang along with AMD Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster, have said that chip development is a great area for AI to thrive.

AMD is using AI in its chip design as we speak, underlining that it uses artificial intelligence in the "place and route" stage of development, where sub-blocks of chip designs are positioned and optimised for improved performance, and lower energy consumption. AI can be used to continuously iterate and learn from patterns which boosts the process of achieving an optimised layout, which boosts performance and improves power efficiency. Papermaster said that AI will continue to grow into other fields of chip design, including microarchitecture designs.

AI is already used in verification suites that help lower the time required to detect bugs in the chip development process, from conception to certification, through to validation phases. AI also helps in generating test patterns, especially with billions and billions of transistors inside of current-gen, let alone future-gen chips. This means that comprehensive test coverage is guaranteed, meaning we get more flawless products before they leave the manufacturing floor. AI can learn from each successive run, finding spots in testing, and adjusting the testing focus when required... thus, speeding up the process and improving test coverage.

Ansys, Cadence, and Synopsys all use AI to help chip designs, with these three companies being the leading companies of electronic design automation (EDA) tools. They all have AI-enabled software that they provide to their clients -- like AMD -- with Synopsys leading here with AI-powered tools. Synopsys recently launched Synopsys.ai, which is the first end-to-end AI-powered EDA solution.

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