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AI unveils strange chip designs, while discovering new functionalities
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-01-ai-unveils-strange-chip-functionalities.html [techxplore.com]
Specialized microchips that manage signals at the cutting edge of wireless technology are astounding works of miniaturization and engineering. They're also difficult and expensive to design.
Now, researchers at Princeton Engineering and the Indian Institute of Technology have harnessed artificial intelligence to take a key step toward slashing the time and cost of designing new wireless chips and discovering new functionalities to meet expanding demands for better wireless speed and performance.
In a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers describe their methodology, in which an AI creates complicated electromagnetic structures and associated circuits in microchips based on the design parameters. What used to take weeks of highly skilled work can now be accomplished in hours.
Moreover, the AI behind the new system has produced strange new designs featuring unusual patterns of circuitry. Kaushik Sengupta, the lead researcher, said the designs were unintuitive and unlikely to be developed by a human mind. But they frequently offer marked improvements over even the best standard chips.
"We are coming up with structures that are complex and look randomly shaped, and when connected with circuits, they create previously unachievable performance. Humans cannot really understand them, but they can work better," said Sengupta, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-director of NextG, Princeton's industry partnership program to develop next-generation communications.
These circuits can be engineered towards more energy-efficient operation or to make them operable across an enormous frequency range that is not currently possible. Furthermore, the method synthesizes inherently complex structures in minutes, while conventional algorithms may take weeks. In some cases, the new methodology can create structures that are impossible to synthesize with current techniques.
