Mentor Extends AI Footprint

Excerpt from article: “Mentor Extends AI Footprint“

Siemens EDA are stepping up their game in AI/ML. They already had a well-established start through the Solido acquisition in Variation Designer and the ML Characterization Suite, and through Tessent Yield Insight. They have also made progress in prior releases towards supporting design for ML accelerators using Catapult HLS. Now they’ve stepped up to better round out (in my view) Catapult support, also to introduce new ML-enabled capabilities in Calibre.

Joe Sawicki (who needs no introduction but for completeness is EVP of IC EDA at Mentor/Siemens EDA) kicked off this announcement with some background on AI/ML, starting with a nice infographic on startups in AI (over 2000 with $27B in funding) and the AI chip landscape, estimated to be $195B by 2027. Will all or even most of the startups make it? Of course not – startups have a significant fallout rate in any field. But the practical stuff – computer vision, keyword/phrase recognition, localization and mapping for robots, among others – this is real, and has massive potential in many markets. Siemens particularly is very interested in the Industry 4.0 opportunities. Joe also noted that over half the fabless venture funding since 2012 has gone into AI startups, most of it relatively recently, which is even more impressive.

Read the entire article on SemiWiki originally published on May 23rd, 2019.