Cognichip is building a deep learning model to work alongside engineers as they design new computer chips. The problem it is trying to solve is one the industry has lived with for decades: Chip design is enormously complex, ruinously expensive, and slow. Advanced chips take three to five years to go from conception to mass production; the design phase alone can take as long as two years before physical layout begins. Consider that the latest line of Nvidia GPUs, Blackwell, contains 104 billion transistors ' that's a lot to line up. In the time it takes to create a new chip, Cognichip CEO and founder Faraj Aalaei says the market can change and make all that investment a waste. Aalaei's goal is to bring the kind of AI tools that software engineers have used to speed their work into the semiconductor design space. The company emerged from stealth last year and said Wednesday that it had raised $60 million in new funding led by Seligman Ventures, with notable participation from Intel...
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