Mastering AI Chip Complexity
Explore challenges and solutions in AI chip development
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Overview
Astera Labs, a Silicon Valley-based company, develops cutting-edge data and memory connectivity solutions that eliminate performance bottlenecks in data centers. Their silicon, software, and system-level connectivity solutions are pivotal in advancing artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in the cloud. As the first private semiconductor company to utilize 100% cloud-based development, Astera Labs has been at the forefront of leveraging cloud technology for designing its entire EDA and silicon solutions.
"Astera Labs products are designed in the cloud, for the cloud. Operating exclusively in the cloud for product development has helped us differentiate by accelerating our design schedule by three-to-four months, which is like gold dust in today's industry."
Sanjay Gajendra
|Chief Business Officer, Astera Labs
Challenges
Astera Labs faced several key challenges:
- Data Connectivity: Astera Labs realized early on that data connectivity was not keeping up with the advances in AI and machine learning applications.
- Aggressive Tapeout Schedules: Needed to address bandwidth, capacity, and performance bottlenecks through the data center to meet fast and efficient cloud and HPC deployments.
- Resource Limitations: Faced challenges in scaling design efforts and accessing the necessary compute and EDA resources.
Solution
Synopsys Cloud provided a comprehensive solution for Astera Labs:
- FlexEDA Pay-Per-Use Model: Enabled Astera Labs to dynamically scale with infinite computing power and a flexible EDA tool licensing model on the AWS cloud.
- BYOC Deployment: Leveraged the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) offering to utilize AWS HPC compute resources, allowing Astera Labs to scale their compute footprint by more than a factor of ten.
- On-Demand Licensing: Synopsys Cloud's on-demand license features provided additional accessibility to the latest tools and compute resources without design interruption.
- Parallel Processing: Allowed running 1000s of regressions at multiple speeds in parallel for more design iterations and faster refinement.
Results
The implementation of Synopsys Cloud brought significant benefits to Astera Labs:
- Accelerated Time-to-Market: Achieved up to 40% time savings from RTL to tapeout by efficient use of compute, storage, EDA, and cloud instances.
- High-Quality Tapeouts: Enabled Astera Labs to achieve higher quality tapeouts by allowing more design iterations and faster refinement.
- Dynamic Scaling: The combination of Synopsys EDA products and AWS HPC compute resources enabled Astera Labs to scale quickly and efficiently.
- Reduced Design Time: Reduced time-to-tapeout by over 30%, addressing resource and compute needs.
By leveraging Synopsys Cloud solutions, Astera Labs successfully accelerated its development processes, improved product quality, and maintained its competitive position in the high-performance computing systems market.
