California-based Synopsys is considering collaborating with Chinese AI modelers to speed up chip design. The company is ready to offer local customers a combination of its tools with Chinese models, since OpenAI services are not available in China. At the same time, cooperation must comply with American export restrictions.
Image source: synopsys.com
Synopsys develops electronic design automation (EDA) software. Company integrates AI into its products, hoping to speed up the work of engineers and create additional sources of revenue.
An example of such a strategy was the partnership with OpenAI, announced on September 30. The companies agreed to jointly develop GPT-Synopsys, a specialized AI model trained to use Synopsys chip design tools. She must interpret the results of these tools and consistently optimize designs for energy consumption, performance and area. The results will be verified using traditional Synopsys tools, and the partners will share revenue from using the product among themselves.
In an interview Nikkei Asia Synopsys director of product management Ravi Subramanian cited one application scenario: an engineer passes the system a fragment of a circuit description in hardware description language and asks it to be redesigned so that the future chip fits within a given power consumption limit.
According to Subramanian, customers need to keep the development cycle of new chips to about a year, which increases demand for automation tools. For the Chinese market, Synopsys is considering a similar cooperation scheme, but with the involvement of local developers of large language models. Specific partners and launch dates have not yet been announced.
As its business expands, Synopsys forecasts revenue growth of about 15% in fiscal 2027, to $11.1 billion to $11.2 billion. This forecast applies to the entire company, not just new AI products.
China remains an important market for Synopsys. According to Nikkei Asia, in the last reported quarter the company’s revenue in the region was $255.5 million, an increase of about 3% year-on-year. China accounts for about 10% of Synopsys’ total revenue. Subramanian also noted the potential of physical AI—humanoid robots and other systems that interact with the world around them—as another area of business growth.
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