By Stephen Nellis
SANTA CLARA, California, March 19 (Reuters) - Synopsys SNPS.O, which makes software used to design semiconductors, on Wednesday introduced a technology it said will pave the way toward computers taking over many of the tasks in creating new computer chips.
Synopsys software helps engineers figure out how to arrange tens of billions of transistors, the tiny electrical switches that make computers work.
That already complex task has gotten more complicated in recent years as companies such as Nvidia NVDA.O, a Synopsys customer, shift from designing single chips to AI server systems with hundreds or even thousands of chips in them while aiming to release a new server each year.
That requires designing thousands of chips and other parts concurrently, and the process is starting to overwhelm engineering teams, Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said at the company's annual user conference in Santa Clara, California.
"These are very complex and difficult to design," Ghazi said of new AI computers. "The pressure engineers are feeling today is not only complexity, it is complexity and the pace by when they need to deliver these products, as well as the cost."
Synopsys on Wednesday unveiled the technology it calls AgentEngineer. In the near term, it will focus on AI "agents" that a human engineer can give instructions to. The agent can then take care of specific tasks in chip design, such as testing whether a circuit design works as intended.
Over time, Synopsys envisions the agents helping coordinate the design of complicated systems with many different chips and parts to ensure products are delivered on time.
"AI plays a huge role, because your R&D capacity is not growing," Shankar Krishnamoorthy, who leads the technology and development group at Synopsys, said in an interview.
"You've got a certain team, you're not going to just double it, triple it, quadruple it. So you have to increase this R&D capacity."
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in Santa Clara, California; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
((stephen.nellis@thomsonreuters.com))
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