China connects AI agents to chip design – speeding up development four times

The problem of import substitution in China’s semiconductor industry goes beyond creating equipment that can produce wafers independently of foreign suppliers. Chip design software is also improving, and Chinese developers are ready to actively use artificial intelligence in this area.

Image source: Jiuxiao Technology

Chairman of Empyrean Technology, which provides chip design-specific software for the Chinese market point out About using artificial intelligence agents in this process. Liu Weiping said that the use of artificial intelligence agents in the optimization design and analog chip operation stages makes the layout work no longer require four weeks, but can be completed in just one week. At the International Integrated Circuit Innovation Show in Shanghai last week, he talked about the paradigm shift in chip design. Instead of directly controlling software tools, people can now control artificial intelligence agents.

At the same time, the business models of such software providers will also change. Instead of paying per-seat license fees, they will now focus on customers’ consumption of AI tokens when using agents to develop chips. Empyrean’s chairman said the company is creating an EDA platform that will allow its own AI agents to interact effectively with partner agents. The Chinese authorities strongly support such initiatives and hope to bring China’s local professional software to the world market by 2030. If things pan out, the introduction of artificial intelligence will help Chinese companies stay ahead of their competitors in this area, although they are not standing still on the introduction of artificial intelligence. The American company Cadence has provided an “AI engineer” ChipStack AI Super Agent to verify the complex data flow in the chip project under development.