Enlightenment CPU: The world's first fully automatic generation of chips

Nantian Electronics, June 30 - According to the Semiconductor Industry Review, a group of researchers from the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has leveraged AI technology to create the world's inaugural fully autonomous CPU chip, dubbed Enlightenment-1(As shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Enlightenment CPU design layout (left) and Enlightenment CPU appearance (right)

Enlightenment-1, founded on the 32-bit RISC-V architecture, boasts a circuit scale that surpasses what GPT-4 can currently conceive by a staggering factor of 4,000. Despite its AI-generated nature, this cutting-edge CPU delivers performance on par with Intel 486 series CPUs and showcases the ability to execute the Linux operating system flawlessly. The completion of this achievement signifies a groundbreaking milestone as the world's first fully autonomous CPU chip, meticulously crafted through a 65nm manufacturing process, and functioning at a frequency of 300MHz. The esteemed research paper outlining the intricacies of Enlightenment-1 was published in June of this year.

As shown in Figure 2, The layout, manufactured chip, and printed circuit board. a, the layout of the entire chip includes the core part of the CPU (CPU core), Phase Locked Loop for clock generation (PLL), Ethernet Media Access Controller module (EMAC), and SD controller (SDC). b, The manufactured chip after packaging can operate at a frequency of 300 MHz. c, The printed circuit board containing the chip for functionality and performance evaluation.

Figure 2: Enlightenment CPU is used on the circuit board

The ingenious minds behind Enlightenment-1 harnessed the power of the Binary Speculation Diagram (BSD) algorithm and AI technology to automatically engender the CPU design using input-output (IO) test cases. Remarkably, no code or natural language descriptions were provided by engineers; the chip materialized within a mere span of 5 hours.

The team at Nantian Electronics observed a prior triumph achieved by researchers from the esteemed Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. They were able to generate a microprocessor using plain English dialogue with ChatGPT-4. This unprecedented feat bolsters the acceleration of chip development and holds the potential to empower individuals lacking specialized skills to partake in chip design endeavors.

The team successfully ran the Linux (kernel 5.15) operating system and SPEC CINT 200044 on the resulting CPU (i.e., CPU-AI) to verify functionality (see Figure 3). They also use the widely used Dhrystone45 to evaluate the performance of CPU-AI. Figure 3b compares the performance of CPU-AI with different generations of commercial CPUs, such as Intel 80386 (1980s), Intel 80486SX (1990s), and Intel Pentium III (2000s). In the programs evaluated, its performance was comparable to that of the Intel 80486SX, designed in mid-1991. Although the performance of CPU-AI is worse than the latest processors such as Intel Core i7 3930K, it is the world's first CPU designed automatically, and its performance can be significantly improved by enhancing the algorithm.

Figure 3: Functional validation and performance comparison

While Enlightenment-1, as an AI-forged chip, may currently fall short of matching the scale of top-tier CPUs, the pursuit of diverse AI pathways promises a future where AI-generated CPUs not only reach but potentially surpass the prowess of CPUs designed by human experts within a span of 5 to 10 years.

 

Data source: Pushing the Limits of Machine Design: Automated CPU Design with AI (Enlightenment PDF)