Siemens announced continued collaboration with TSMC on AI-powered automation and advanced semiconductor design enablement. The work builds on their relationship within the TSMC Open Innovation Platform (OIP) ecosystem and expands design enablement across semiconductor design workflows. Siemens’ EDA portfolio supports TSMC advanced process technologies, TSMC 3DFabric technologies and silicon photonics design enablement. As part of the collaboration, Siemens and TSMC have enabled an AI-powered agent for automated design rule check (DRC) fixing across digital and custom integrated circuit (IC) design flows. The agent is powered by Calibre software and integrated with Aprisa software and Solido software.
Ankur Gupta, executive vice president, EDA IC Software, Siemens Digital Industries Software, said: “Our continued collaboration with TSMC exemplifies Siemens' commitment to delivering AI-driven automation and advanced semiconductor design capabilities that help customers innovate at the industry's most advanced process nodes. By combining Siemens' EDA portfolio with TSMC's leading process and packaging technologies, we are helping customers achieve new levels of productivity, speed and design confidence.”
Aveek Sarkar, director of the ecosystem and alliance management division at TSMC, said: “AI presents a significant opportunity to drive productivity and efficiency across increasingly complex semiconductor design workflows. Our collaboration with OIP partners like Siemens focuses on delivering intelligent, trusted automation that empowers engineers to navigate rising design complexity while achieving stringent performance and energy-efficiency targets. By integrating AI into critical stages of the design process, we enable mutual customers to leverage TSMC’s industry-leading processes and advanced packaging technologies to accelerate the expansion of AI innovation.”
AI-Powered Semiconductor Design
Siemens and TSMC are working on the Fuse EDA AI System and Fuse EDA AI Agent for autonomous, long-running and self-verifying EDA workflows. These workflows can reason across multi-step design tasks, orchestrate actions across multiple EDA tools, and validate engineering outcomes. The Fuse EDA AI Agent is enhanced by NVIDIA AI technologies for token efficiency, reasoning and execution across long-running workloads.
An AI-powered DRC-fix workflow combines Calibre software, Aprisa AI and Solido Fuse technologies to identify, analyze and resolve design rule violations across digital and custom IC design flows. This builds on the Calibre Check Assist capability, which provides contextual guidance and design rule information during DRC debugging. The collaboration also includes agentic custom IC design capabilities powered by Solido Fuse and agentic place-and-route and digital implementation workflows enabled by Aprisa software.
Support for TSMC 3DFabric Technologies
Siemens and TSMC continue work on advanced 3D IC design enablement for TSMC 3DFabric technologies. Siemens has enabled multi-machine support with Calibre 3DStack Advanced software for inter-chiplet antenna verification, including support for TSMC-SoIC. Certification work is underway to support chip-on-wafer-on-substrate with local silicon interconnect (CoWoS-L). Performance improvements have been demonstrated in the Interface Check Flow for TSMC-SoW.
Siemens’ EDA portfolio, including Solido Simulation Suite software, Calibre xACT software and Calibre 3DThermal software, supports collaborative work with TSMC on 3D IC and multiphysics design initiatives, including silicon photonics applications and other advanced packaging technologies.
Calibre 3DThermal software has achieved certification for static and transient thermal analysis of TSMC 3DFabric technologies and for TSMC A16 static and transient thermal analysis. It has completed enablement for the system-on-wafer thermal reference flow. Work is in progress for the TSMC-COUPE (Compact Universal Photonic Engine) reference flow.
Progress continues on complete 3Dblox support, including chip-package co-design workflows with mutual customers. The companies are also collaborating on Aprisa software capabilities for pre-sim driven die-to-die (D2D) auto-routing.
Siemens’ EDA technologies support design, implementation and verification of TSMC-COUPE features. Joint silicon photonics development activities include design, implementation and verification flows using Innovator3D IC Integrator, Calibre 3DStack, Solido Simulation Suite, L-Edit software and Calibre Interactive. Solido Simulation Suite software supports PAM4 measurements associated with TSMC-COUPE technology for optical transceiver interfaces. Joint validation efforts for the Calibre 3DThermal solution for TSMC-COUPE are ongoing.
Advanced Process Technologies
Calibre nmDRC, Calibre nmLVS, Calibre xACT and Calibre PERC have achieved certification for the TSMC A14 process node.
Solido Simulation Suite software is certified for SPICE accuracy in TSMC N3C, A16 and A14 process technologies. Collaboration extends into TSMC’s custom design reference flow, where Siemens’ technologies support reliability-aware simulation capabilities addressing IC aging, real-time self-heating and safe operating area checks, as well as Solido Design Environment for variation-aware verification and automated cell optimization.
mPower software is certified for TSMC N2P (digital and analog) and N3C (analog) transistor-level IR/EM analysis. Collaboration continues on N2 and N3 electromigration and IR-drop custom design reference flows. Certification activities for Aprisa software and mPower analog software on A14 technology are underway.
Siemens Xcelerator Academy
Siemens Xcelerator Academy provides self-paced, on-demand learning resources for Siemens’ EDA portfolio. The program is now available to TSMC Design Center Alliance partners in addition to mutual customers. Siemens recently released an end-to-end digital implementation flow lab tutorial based on TSMC 5nm process technology through the program.
Further information is available at https://www.siemens.com/en-us/company/electronic-design-automation/.
