Synopsys introduced a new suite of software tools on Wednesday to address the growing complexity of designing artificial intelligence chips. This marks one of the company's first major product releases since its $35 billion acquisition of engineering software firm Ansys.
The new tools were announced at an industry conference in Silicon Valley. For decades, Synopsys has been a leading supplier of software used to design the layout of the billions of transistors that make up a chip, with clients including companies like Advanced Micro Devices and NVIDIA—the latter having invested $2 billion in Synopsys last year.
However, flagship products from AMD and NVIDIA are no longer single chips; instead, they are composed of multiple smaller "chiplets" packaged together in increasingly complex arrangements.
This trend was a key driver behind the Ansys acquisition: chip designers must now solve problems that were traditionally the domain of mechanical engineers. For example, they need to predict whether the heat generated by operating chiplets will cause warping or expansion, potentially leading to cracks or separation from adjacent chiplets—failures that could destroy a complex chip worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Sassine Ghazi, CEO of Synopsys, stated that the new tools are designed to integrate these engineering capabilities into the software already used by chip designers, such as those at Intel.
"In the past, engineers would complete each design step in isolation," Ghazi said. "The end result was a product that cost more and couldn't deliver maximum performance. By bringing these capabilities forward into the design phase, we enable better performance, lower power consumption, and of course, lower cost."
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