Latest news with #QiMeng
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
China's AI chip tool QiMeng beats engineers, designs processors in just days
As the US-China tech war intensifies, both nations are racing to secure independence in critical technologies. With Washington tightening access to advanced chip tools, Beijing is ramping up efforts to break its reliance on Western software. In a major step, China's top scientific body has unveiled a homegrown, AI-powered system to automate chip design, an area long dominated by American firms. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has launched an AI-driven chip design platform called QiMeng, meaning 'enlightenment' in Chinese. Developed by the State Key Laboratory of Processor, the Intelligent Software Research Centre, and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the system aims to accelerate semiconductor development and reduce dependency on human programmers. QiMeng leverages large language models to automate complex chip design tasks. The developers open-sourced the system on GitHub and published detailed technical documentation in a recent research paper. The team added that an autonomous-driving chip, which would take human engineers weeks to complete, could be produced by QiMeng in just a few days. QiMeng is built around three functional layers. The foundation is a domain-specific processor chip model. Above that is a design agent that handles both hardware and software aspects. The top layer contains various chip design applications. These components work together to support automated front-end design, generation of hardware description language, OS configuration, and compiler toolchain creation. The research paper notes that future iterations will boost the system's capacity for self-evolution. Using the platform, researchers have built two processors: QiMeng-CPU-v1, which is comparable to Intel's 486 chip, and QiMeng-CPU-v2, which aligns with Arm's Cortex A53. The launch of QiMeng comes at a time when the US is pressuring major electronic design automation (EDA) software vendors to stop selling to Chinese firms. Companies like Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens EDA, who together held 82% of China's EDA market last year, have been hit by fresh export restrictions from the US Commerce Department, according to a Morgan Stanley report cited by SCMP. QiMeng is a direct attempt to replace reliance on these Western firms. 'The goal was to improve efficiency, reduce costs and shorten development cycles when compared to manual methods,' said the CAS team in their paper. The system also aims to enable rapid customisation of domain-specific chip architectures and software stacks. As AI advances demand more powerful chips, China's ability to design and fabricate them locally becomes crucial. While the country still lags behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in advanced chip fabrication, efforts like QiMeng are intended to close the gap in design capabilities. The developers acknowledged remaining hurdles, citing 'constrained fabrication technology, limited resources and a diverse ecosystem.' Still, they hope QiMeng will help automate the full chip design and verification process in the long run.
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Chinese academy launches automated system to speed up chip design amid US software curbs
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the nation's premier science institution, has unveiled a chip design system driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that has the potential to significantly accelerate semiconductor development and replace human programmers. Developed by the State Key Laboratory of Processor and the Intelligent Software Research Centre, both under CAS, and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the fully automated integrated circuit design system is called QiMeng, which means 'enlightenment' in Chinese. The system uses large language models – the technology underpinning advanced AI chatbots. Details were published in a research paper last week and open-sourced on GitHub. According to the developers, chips designed by QiMeng match the performance and efficiency of those created by human experts. A customised autonomous-driving chip, for example, which might take weeks for a team of human developers to create could be accomplished by QiMeng in just days, according to the team. An overview of the automated chip design system QiMeng. Photo: Handout The unveiling of QiMeng comes as the US has pressured leading electronic design automation (EDA) software suppliers to halt sales of chip design tools to China , further complicating Beijing's goal to strengthen its semiconductor industry. QiMeng comprises three interconnected layers: at the base is a domain-specific large processor chip model; in the middle, a hardware and software design agent; and at the top, various processor chip design applications.
