AI Outperforms Humans on Chip Floorplanning Stage

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Image: Nature



New techniques are being used to improve chip designs as manufacturing processes continue to mature and evolve. Researchers at Cornell University have applied AI in the floorplanning stage, where the memory block layout of the macroblock is decided. The AI not only designed it quicker than humans but also increased the potential speed and efficiency of the chip. This stage usually takes days or weeks, but the AI designed it in under six hours. It was trained with reinforcement learning to assess the state of the chip when making decisions. Google has already used these findings for its next-generation artificial-intelligence processors.



Success or failure in designing microchips depends heavily on steps known as floorplanning and placement. These steps determine where memory and logic elements are located on a chip. The locations, in...

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[Brian_B]

My only surprise at this is that the industry was not already using some algorithm or design process to optimize this

 

[Denpepe]

My only surprise at this is that the industry was not already using some algorithm or design process to optimize this

I guess engineers like to keep their jobs so they would be in no hurry to implement such things.

 

[Uvilla]

This and computer programming, plus driver debugging and such should be great fields for AI.

 

[Endgame]

I guess engineers like to keep their jobs so they would be in no hurry to implement such things.

You obviously haven’t worked in IT . Generally stuff gets automated because you’re frustrated with your worthless co workers