Can AI design a chip that's more efficient than human-made ones? Google DeepMind says its artificial intelligence has helped design chips that are already being used in data centres and even smartphones. But some chip design experts are sceptical of the company's claims that such AI can plan new chip layouts better than humans can. The newly named AlphaChip method can design "superhuman chip layouts" in hours, rather than relying on weeks or months of human effort, said Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini, researchers at Google DeepMind, in a blog post. This AI approach uses reinforcement learning to figure out the relationships among chip components and gets rewarded based on the final layout quality.

Artificial intelligence is now helping to design computer chips--including the very ones needed to run the most powerful AI code. Sketching out a computer chip is both complex and intricate, requiring designers to arrange billions of components on a surface smaller than a fingernail. Decisions at each step can affect a chip's eventual performance and reliability, so the best chip designers rely on years of experience and hard-won know-how to lay out circuits that squeeze the best performance and power efficiency from nanoscopic devices. Previous efforts to automate chip design over several decades have come to little. But recent advances in AI have made it possible for algorithms to learn some of the dark arts involved in chip design.

Google claims that it has developed artificial intelligence software that can design computer chips faster than humans can. The tech giant said in a paper in the journal Nature on Wednesday that a chip that would take humans months to design can be dreamed up by its new AI in less than six hours. The AI has already been used to develop the next iteration of Google's tensor processing unit chips, which are used to run AI-related tasks, Google said. "Our method has been used in production to design the next generation of Google TPU," wrote the authors of the paper, led by Google's co-heads of machine learning for systems, Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie. To put it another way, Google is using AI to design chips that can be used to create even more sophisticated AI systems.

Google claims that it has developed artificial intelligence software that can design computer chips faster than humans can. The tech giant said in a paper in the journal Nature on Wednesday that a chip that would take humans months to design can be dreamed up by its new AI in less than six hours. The AI has already been used to develop the latest iteration of Google's tensor processing unit chips, which are used to run AI-related tasks, Google said. "Our method has been used in production to design the next generation of Google TPU," wrote the authors of the paper, led by Google's head of machine learning for systems, Azalia Mirhoseini. To put it another way, Google is using AI to design chips that can be used to create even more sophisticated AI systems.

A new reinforcement-learning algorithm has learned to optimize the placement of components on a computer chip to make it more efficient and less power-hungry. It requires the careful configuration of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of components across multiple layers in a constrained area. Traditionally, engineers will manually design configurations that minimize the amount of wire used between components as a proxy for efficiency. They then use electronic design automation software to simulate and verify their performance, which can take up to 30 hours for a single floor plan. Time lag: Because of the time investment put into each chip design, chips are traditionally supposed to last between two and five years.

For more than 30 years, Intel has made a name with its CPUs, which rule the PC and server markets. Chip advances have helped Intel make devices smaller, faster, and more power-efficient. Computing is now spreading into cars, robots, drones, smart devices, and a wide range of other electronics. Chip requirements have changed with new hardware and applications like artificial intelligence and graphics. Intel is preparing for the future and making big changes in the way it designs chips.