How AI is Changing Every Aspect of EDA

EE Times Current · 26 Sept 2024 · 31m

AI in practice: 4 real uses of AI described

What this episode covers

Satish Kumar Balasubrahmanian, who leads product management for custom IC verification at Siemens EDA, explains how the company applies 'Verifiable AI' to accelerate semiconductor design and verification. He details the evolution from brute-force Monte Carlo simulations to AI-driven tools like Solido, which reduce simulation counts by 100x while maintaining high-sigma accuracy for mission-critical applications like automotive. Balasubrahmanian also discusses the integration of generative AI and LLMs to leverage historical design data, improve workforce training, and automate knowledge retrieval, arguing that these tools must be verifiable and robust to be production-ready.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Engineering & simulationSolido High Sigma Monte Carloless than 10,000 simulations (vs 1,000,000+)

AI modeling reduced the number of simulations required to achieve 5-6 sigma confidence from over 100,000 to less than 10,000, providing the same accuracy as brute force methods with significantly fewer resources.

“So what, Soledo came up with this pseudo-high Sigma Monte Carlo. And this was the solution that used AI modeling in which we were able to give the same confidence of 5 to 6 sigma of root force, but with far less assimilations.”

Speaker 2 · Hear it at 15:49

Engineering & simulationCalibre

Machine learning techniques are used to detect hotspots in lithography much faster than traditional methods, optimizing resource prediction and speeding up the sign-off process.

“In caliber, caliber, semi-caliber, little tools. We use machine learning techniques to actually figure out, for example, where is the hotspot? How can you detect the hotspot in a much more fast away rather than running rather than spending too much too much time in doing it in a traditional way?”

Speaker 2 · Hear it at 15:49

Engineering & simulationQuestas platform33 X reduction on time

AI techniques are applied to functional verification to increase coverage and reduce the time spent achieving near 100% verification coverage by up to 33 times.

“The 2nd one is going to be on the functional verification, which is a questa platform. What we do is we actually increase the verification coverage … With AI, we are able to use different techniques to actually reduce the time that's spent to get almost 100% coverage, almost up to 33 X reduction on time.”

Speaker 2 · Hear it at 10:20

Engineering & simulationVelodrome platform50% reduction in compiled time

AI is used in emulation and prototyping to reduce compilation time by 50% by learning from previous compilations and adjusting hardware simulation time on the fly.

“So we have in emulation of prototyping, we have a velodge platform that actually uses AI to actually reduce the compiled time of front 50% reduction in the compiled time. That's a huge, huge, I would say, savings that we do. And we have a lot of ways of doing that. We learn from previous previous compiled.”

Speaker 2 · Hear it at 10:20

Mentioned

Companies
Siemens EDA, Solido Design Automation, Synopsys
Products
Solido High Sigma Monte Carlo, Caliber, Questasim, Veloce, ChatGPT
Also
Python

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