The game of chip design is incredibly complex, but AI tools are now being developed to help chip designers optimize the physical design and improve performance. Using graph neural networks and reinforcement learning, AI tools can optimize the placement of macros and standard cells to improve power, performance, and area. While AI is currently only used in a few steps of the chip design flow, there is a lot of potential for its use to speed up the process and co-design hardware and software. However, chip design is still a highly creative and complex field that requires human engineers, and AI can only assist in the process.
1. The game of Go is incredibly complex with 10 to the power of 360 possible configurations.
2. Deepmind's AlphaGo was able to learn to play the game and eventually defeat the world's number one player.
3. AI can now learn how to design chips by itself.
4. AI tools can excel in the physical design phase of chip design.
5. AI tools for chip design are becoming more popular and are being developed by companies like Cadence and Nvidia.
6. AI is being used to speed up various aspects of chip design, including verification and inspection of wafers.
7. In the future, AI is likely to help with other sub-steps of chip design, including analog design, verification, and validation.
8. AI is expected to play a bigger role in the co-design of hardware and software powering AI itself.