AI is taking a growing role in chip design

A Tom's Hardware feature details how AI is used in chip development, from placement and routing optimization in Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA tools to RTL code generation and agentic systems. Architect Labs claimed an industry-first chip almost entirely designed by AI, though key architectural decisions still rest with human engineers.

• Architect Labs claimed an industry-first chip almost fully designed by AI
• Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA added AI features in the early 2020s
• Google's AlphaChip was used for three generations of TPUs
• Nvidia trains models on its own RTL and documentation