There are an increasing number of new EDA companies these days, and this is great news. The industry needs some new vitality, new thought leaders, people willing to take risks. The same goes for established companies that cannot go outside their existing comfort zone while meeting next quarter’s financial goals. But sometimes, new startups forget the risks associated with semiconductor design. While they may be able to point to an improvement in time to market, or meeting better performance goals, they fail to understand how small that particular step is in the whole process.

Today, a number of companies want us to believe that AI can do everything. Some point the way to automating design, others to verification, and some even claim it can do both at the same time, from the same source material. No, it can’t. While some of it may be possible in the future, it is far from that point today.

What many of them fail to do is show proof. One example, one design, one piece of IP is not proof. When verifying any new tool or methodology, you always need to hold back a test set to apply at the end. In this case, with AI, it has to be something it has never seen before, never been trained on. That is the only thing that can provide a fair, unbiased result. As soon as you tweak your tool to do well on that test case, it is no longer a true test.

This is why I was delighted to receive communications from Vikash Kumar, senior verification architect at Arm.

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