Build Semiconductor Chips with AI
Chip design is a large-scale constrained optimisation problem. Every physical-design decision affects net connectivity, routing demand, congestion, timing margins, and downstream closure effort.
Engineers repeatedly move through placement, legalisation, congestion analysis, timing and DRC checks, repair, and reruns. Each iteration can require significant compute and long tool runtimes.
Macro placement is a useful window into this problem. Large memories and IP blocks must be arranged on a fixed canvas, with enough room for signals to move around them. A placement can be legal and still create congestion, long wires, or painful downstream fixes.
Archgen AI is an agentic ecosystem designed specifically for semiconductor chip design. By bridging the gap between legacy EDA tools and intelligent agentic workflows, they empower hardware engineers to ship silicon faster than ever in the AI era.
Their chip-design engine recently won the Hudson River Trading (HRT) and Partcl macro-placement challenge. The result came from building a disciplined search system around the EDA flow: GPU-accelerated proposal generation, incremental scoring, diverse starting points, congestion-aware repair, and strict validation. Read the technical write-up
In this session, we will unpack how AI can sit inside the chip-design loop: proposing changes, reading tool feedback, deciding where to spend more compute, and learning which strategies are worth carrying forward.
About the speakers:
Hariharan Ayappane, co-founder and CEO of Archgen AI, works on physical-design workflows and agentic systems for chip engineering. Previously a Lossfunk resident.
Naveen Venkat, co-founder and CTO of Archgen AI, works on optimisation, AI systems, and chip-design tooling.
Pre-read:
How We Ranked First in the HRT and Partcl Macro Placement Challenge
Why Chip Design Still Takes 18 Months, and What AI Can Actually Fix
Cognitive Agents for the Next Era of Silicon
Join online: meet.google.com/evg-mhev-uqz
Looking forward to seeing you!