Synopsys rolls out new software tools for designing AI chips

Synopsys on Wednesday rolled out new software tools to handle the fast-increasing complexity of designing artificial intelligence chips, the first wave of new offerings after its $35 billion buyout of engineering software firm Ansys.

Synopsys, which announced the new tools at a conference in ‌Silicon Valley, has ⁠for ⁠decades been one of the main suppliers of software used in determining how to arrange the tens of billions of transistors that make up chips from firms such as Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia, which last year invested in $2 billion Synopsys. But flagship offerings from AMD and Nvidia are no longer a ⁠single chip ‌at all, but instead many smaller "chiplets" stacked and packaged together in increasingly complicated ways.

That trend drove the ⁠Ansys deal because chip designers now must grapple ​with problems that used to be the realm ​of mechanical engineers, such as whether the heat generated by chiplet could cause it warp or expand in ways that could make it crack and separate from its neighbor, destroying a complex chip that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.


Sassine ‌Ghazi, the CEO of Synopsys, said the new tools aim to embed those engineering tools into the ​software tools ​that chip designers ⁠such as Intel and others are already using.

"Typically you have engineers designing for each step in a siloed way," Ghazi said. "What ends ​up happening is that the product is more expensive and it's not operating at its maximum potential. We're putting them in the design phase, so you're able to achieve a better performance, lower power and definitely lower cost."