NVIDIA adds generative AI into cuLitho: game-changing 60x speed up for chipmakers like TSMC

NVIDIA announced its new Blackwell GPU at GTC 2024 this week, with the company announcing that TSMC and Synopsys are using its cuLitho software in production to boost computational lithography.

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This is an important step that helps chip makers walk around limitations imposed on them as we get into 2nm and smaller transistors produced with next-level machines like ASML's new High-NA EUV lithography machines. The computational power behind these chips continues to skyrocket, which is where NVIDIA and cuLitho steps in.

NVIDIA used an example of a cuLitho-powered system packing 300 x H100 AI GPUs, which provided a gigantic 60x performance increase for a workload that would normally require 40,000 x GPU systems and a mind-boggling 30 million or more hours of compute time.

NVIDIA's cuLitho software isn't new, with the company unveiling it in 2023, but now it's got generative AI into the workflow that provides another -- yes, another -- 2x increase in performance on top of the amazing gains without generative AI and just plain 'ol cuLitho doing its thing.

Since its introduction last year, cuLitho has enabled TSMC to open new opportunities for innovative patterning technology, where testing cuLitho on their shared workflows, TSMC realized a 45x speedup in curvilinear flows, and close to 60x improvement in more traditional Manhattan-style workflows.

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Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: "Computational lithography is a cornerstone of chip manufacturing. Our work on cuLitho, in partnership with TSMC and Synopsys, applies accelerated computing and generative AI to open new frontiers for semiconductor scaling".

Dr. C.C. Wei, CEO of TSMC said: "Our work with NVIDIA to integrate GPU-accelerated computing in the TSMC workflow has resulted in great leaps in performance, dramatic throughput improvement, shortened cycle time and reduced power requirements. We are moving NVIDIA cuLitho into production at TSMC, leveraging this computational lithography technology to drive a critical component of semiconductor scaling".

Sassine Ghazi, president and CEO of Synopsys, said: "For more than two decades Synopsys Proteus mask synthesis software products have been the production-proven choice for accelerating computational lithography - the most demanding workload in semiconductor manufacturing. With the move to advanced nodes, computational lithography has dramatically increased in complexity and compute cost. Our collaboration with TSMC and NVIDIA is critical to enabling angstrom-level scaling as we pioneer advanced technologies to reduce turnaround time by orders of magnitude through the power of accelerated computing".