Jonathan Cassell from analyst firm Omdia told Chuck Martin, editorial director of AI and IoT, Informa Tech, he enjoyed his first DesignCon in two years and being able to network in person once more.

He covers chips and hardware at Omdia focused on both the cloud and data center, and says AI is now playing a core role in the design stages of product development.

Automation companies are building in-chip design capabilities to reduce manpower and lead-times associated with the process – ultimately meaning less “re-dos” for delivering the goods.

Trillions of transistors and hundreds of thousands of processors required for AI models ever growing in complexity have left the industry struggling to keep up – with Moore’s Law slowing down – but automation in design ironically has offered a solution.

Cassell believes the trend could lead to novel designs – a recently introduced Google design, for example, was unlike anything that a human designer would come up with.

“Things have moved over to the design side of things to make up for the slack in other areas,” Cassell concluded. “They’re dependent on AI to produce better chips, to provide the kind of chips we’ll need in the future,”