A NEW silicon chip design breakthrough in Limerick could herald the high-paying jobs in a new technology industry.
The world’s first fabrication and design of a silicon chip without direct human input has been completed by researchers at Lero, the University of Limerick-based Research Centre for Software.
The new design breakthrough could see a raft of high-paying jobs created in the Mid West, with the emergence of a new high-tech export-based industry.
Professor of Machine Learning at UL, Conor Ryan, led the groundbreaking design team, which has filed the patent for the Irish-designed process.
The breakthrough came from a project entitled Automatic Design of Digital Circuits, funded by Research Ireland.
Professor Ryan said that this new design is a world first.
“This is the first time ever anywhere in the world that machine learning has been used to design and fabricate a silicon chip entirely from scratch,” he said.
“This could pave the way for a new era of automated digital circuit design with Ireland at its centre, creating a new export industry with many well-paying jobs.”
The Limerick-based team plans to work with selected global chip design and fabrication companies following the successful manufacture of a Lero-designed chip by world-leading chip foundry TSMC, paving the way for a new era of automated digital circuit design.
The new design “radically reduces the time and financial resources required to produce integrated circuits,” Prof Ryan said, adding that it democratises “access to advanced hardware innovation. Our process also eliminates an entire step in the traditional verification process.”
