Insights from the Design Automation Conference

This week we attended the 61st edition of the Design Automation Conference (DAC). It is considered to be one of the leading conferences for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). It brings together a community of experts, researchers and designers from around the world to discuss and learn about chips to systems.

It was clear that the key theme this year was Artificial Intelligence (AI). There were several sessions on AI and its productivity benefits for design tools. It was exciting to hear about the new wave of AI-powered EDA tools and innovation. We found Alan Lee’s, CTO of Analog Devices Inc, keynote session on ‘AI and the Intelligent Edge’ particularly interesting as he describes the future of AI lying at the edge rather than centralized. Using an Earth model analogy (as pictured), centralized AI is at the core, and edge device AI is at the crust. Power, latency, and bandwidth are some of the reasons why Alan believes edge AI is the future.

Members of the Machine Discovery team were delighted to attend the conference and to see that we all share a common vision of AI's role in accelerating IC design schedules. We are pleased to see the benefits of AI being recognized among other EDA players.

It is rewarding to see how AI's disruptive nature is increasingly acknowledged in semiconductor IC design. We founded the company with this vision in 2019 and remain uniquely positioned as a pure-play AI company servicing the semiconductor industry.

Speed was also a key topic at DAC, with an emphasis on faster time-to-market. This is in line with our focus on delivering a solution for exhaustive verification to accelerate development time and also deliver higher-quality products.

The Discovery Platform allows the creation of AI-powered analog models in days rather than months. These models can then be used to explore the entire design space in minutes to achieve higher quality, more reliable end-products. Therefore, opening up new possibilities.

It is a pleasure to attend conferences like these, which shine a light on new-generation technologies and provide updates on where the industry is going.