Episode 67: A Conversation with Aart de Geus on EDA and the Future of Silicon Design

DesignSynopsys AI toolswell over 300 production designs

Synopsys used AI pattern recognition to optimize chip design flows, resulting in designs that were substantially better and much faster than human-designed ones.

“And the first time that we saw real results was in late 2019 already, where we saw, hey, you know, we can do circuits substantially better and much faster than humans could. And today, some four years later or so, we have well over 300 production designs that are being done with that.”

DesignSynopsys AI toolstools got easily 20% better

Synopsys applied AI pattern recognition to optimize individual tool outputs, improving tool performance by approximately 20%.

“and the answer was definitely, yes, and the tools got easily 20% better during that time. But then came the next step. And that's the one that I'm really proud of, because synopsis has been absolutely an AI pioneer in that direction.”

DesignSynthesis (General Electric/Synopsys)30% smaller, and 30% faster

An early automated synthesis tool replaced manual design tasks, producing designs that were 30% smaller and 30% faster than human-engineered equivalents.

“And so we would go to customers and ask them for a design they were working on, and then pass it through the synthesizer, and literally, in a few hours, come back with something that was 30% smaller, and 30% faster. Power, at that time, was not a consideration.”