“A trillion transistors” sounds like hyperbole, until it’s not. Designing today’s leading-edge transistors resembles expanding a structure that never stops growing. Chiplets are bolted on as packaging stacks everything vertically, and elements like power delivery and interconnects get re-routed each time footprints change. Eventually, the challenge of designing the actual blueprint is taken over by coordinating everything that connects to it.

That coordination is what Cadence is targeting with what it calls its new ChipStack AI Super Agent. Announced February 10, the system embeds an AI-driven assistant across Cadence’s electronic and design automation portfolio, with the stated aim of helping engineers design, debug, verify, and sign off complex semiconductor projects more efficiently.