Reducing The Expertise Required For Software Developers To Participate In Chip Creation (USC)


A new technical paper titled "A Vertically Integrated Framework for Templatized Chip Design" was published by researchers at University of Southern California. Abstract "Developers who primarily engage with software often struggle to incorporate custom hardware into their applications, even though specialized silicon can provide substantial benefits to machine learning and AI, as well as ... » read more

AI In A/MS IC Design: Between Buzzword And Productivity Boost


In the past few years, AI has burst onto the public stage in grand style. This ongoing trend is apparent in the rising number of AI applications in everyday life. But more and more, it can also be seen in a broad range of technical niches, where the main motivation is AI’s promise of continuously increasing efficiency. One such niche that has seen decades of attempts to achieve greater eff... » read more

AI Plays Multiple Roles Within EDA


AI's infusion into our world may seem sudden and unexpected, but EDA has been quietly adopting it for more than a decade. What's changed is that it's now becoming more visible, thanks to increasingly powerful large language models (LLMs) and the need to apply them to increasingly challenging multi-physics problems. Two fundamental shifts underlie AI's increasing prominence. First, heat is be... » read more

The Next Big Thing


Sometimes, we spend so much time looking for the next big thing that we actually miss something even bigger. I have to admit I was guilty of this while employed by a large EDA company 20 years ago. I was one of those ESL people — Electronic System Level acolytes, with Gary Smith as our standard bearer. We wanted to do many things, including raising the level of abstraction for design and veri... » read more

Multimodal LLM Assistant for Chip Physical Design (National Taiwan Univ., UCLA, NVIDIA)


A new technical paper titled "Multimodal Chip Physical Design Engineer Assistant" was published by researchers at National Taiwan University, University of California, Los Angeles and NVIDIA Research. Abstract "Modern chip physical design relies heavily on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, which often struggle to provide interpretable feedback or actionable guidance for improving ro... » read more

Unlocking Clarity: Keyphrase Trees Bring Structure To AI Text Analysis


By Amr Hegazy, Mohamed Abdelkarim, and Reem El Adawi In the vast digital landscape of information, from intricate design specifications to extensive patent literature and complex verification reports, extracting meaningful insights often feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. This challenge is particularly acute in the semiconductor industry, where critical details are buried with... » read more

Current Problems Grow For Power Delivery


IR drop is becoming more problematic for a growing proportion of designs, an indication that the power delivery network (PDN) is not providing enough current to parts of the design when required. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to this problem. In the past, when voltages were much higher, a small voltage droop didn't really matter. At the same time, wires were much thicker and presented ... » read more

Silicon IP Continues Steady Growth Path


EDA and silicon IP revenue increased 8.6% to $5.089 billion in Q2 2025, up from $4.6855 billion in Q2 2024, according to the ESD Alliance. Total EDA revenue growth was assisted by impressive results in the CAE category, the largest tool sector, which showed 17.2% growth over Q2 2024. “It was another good quarter overall," said Walden C. Rhines, executive sponsor of the SEMI Electronic Desi... » read more

What Does Semiconductor Disruption Look Like?


When conducting interviews for my article on the incorporation of AI within EDA tools, Anand Thiruvengadam, senior director and head of AI product management at Synopsys, said, "AI has the potential to transform how customers do chip design. The entire EDA flow can be disrupted with AI." He is not alone in making this kind of statement. Each year, I do a predictions piece, and I ask about how A... » read more

AI Agents For UVM Generation: Challenges And Opportunities


By Yuheng Tang and Kexun Zhang In the last two years, the role of AI tools in developers' workflows has rapidly expanded. What were once simple "code completion" engines have since evolved into agents that can read documentation, test their own code, and improve via self-reflection. While AI has already begun enhancing RTL design workflows, its exploration in verification remains in early st... » read more

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