Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits

Synopsys’ Stelios Diamantidis Is Bringing the Magic of AI To Chip Design

Apr 4, 2023

Stelios Diamantidis, a distinguished architect at Synopsys with extensive experience in chip design and AI, dives into the revolutionary impact of AI on chip design. He shares how he views chip design as a complex game and discusses DSO.ai, which optimizes design processes. Stelios highlights the differing priorities in chip design—from speed to energy consumption—and the transformative journey from manual processes to AI-driven methodologies. His passion for technology, stemming from childhood encounters with computers, speaks to the future of innovation in this field.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Silicon Graphics' Innovation

Stelios Diamantidis recounts Silicon Graphics' groundbreaking work in accelerating graphics computers in the mid-90s.
They scaled systems from multiple machines to entire building floors, achieving near photorealistic simulations.

ANECDOTE

First Startup

After SGI, Stelios Diamantidis started a company focused on automating chip verification.
Partnering with Veracity Design, they created solutions used by many companies for chip design.

INSIGHT

Real-World Chip Validation

Chip validation extends beyond virtual models to real-world deployment, including safety-critical environments.
Observability into chip internals during operation is crucial for debugging complex systems.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

“It’s a magical world.” After several decades in the chip design industry, Stelios Diamantidis might be just as fascinated by the work he gets to do today as when he saw his first computer as a child growing up in Greece.

Inspired by the success of computers and AI systems in defeating humans in strategy games like chess and Go, Diamantidis wondered, “what if we were to one day be able to treat chip design as a game, a very complex game?” Armed with that question, Diamantidis and his Synopsys colleagues got to work.

Eventually, that led to their DSO.ai (design space optimization using AI) product. As Diamantidis explains in the interview, they started on smaller challenges in the IC design flow and have expanded over the past few years. “I'm extremely excited that this…technology has provided a framework for all of them, no exceptions so far, to actually come up with great solutions.”

When discussing IC design optimization, Dimantidis states, “everybody has their own definition of the problem.” CPU designers want to optimize speed, GPU designers are focused on reducing energy consumption, and flash memory designers “are very paranoid about size because they're going to manufacture tens or hundreds of millions of units.”

In this Moore’s Lobby interview with host Daniel Bogdanoff, Diamantidis shares his experiences at an early pioneering tech company working with “some of the most remarkable folks I’ve ever met” while solving problems that were “the stuff of science fiction.” He also shares insights from founding two different EDA technology companies of his own.

Here are a few other interesting stories and anecdotes from this fascinating interview with Diamantidis:

-How some life decisions come down to snow versus palm trees

-About how budding computer programmers in Greece used to share their code through a print magazine—our younger audience might find that hard to believe

-What Jurassic Park, US President Bill Clinton, and Stelios’ early dreams have in common

-It’s not really what you miss, but what you don't know you miss

There is much more, so go listen for yourself!