ACI for Design Optimization

Power, Performance, Area Revealed

Estimate PPA pre-synthesis, identify the Pareto front for competing objectives in real time, and explore the micro-architecture space to find the best design points for power, performance, and area.

Implementation engineers, microarchitects, back-end designers — and more

Tokyo, Japan

Explore the PPA frontier with physics-informed optimization.

The Challenge

Optimized Last, Understood Least

In modern chip design, PPA optimization remains a slow, iterative struggle. Because power, performance, and area can only be estimated after synthesis, teams grind through lengthy generation-synthesis-(re)verification loops just to learn whether a change helped. Tradeoffs among the three are rarely clear up front, so designers treat them as zero-sum and settle for “good enough.” Each iteration triggers another long round-trip between front-end and back-end teams, pushing critical PPA decisions dangerously late.

Identify competing objectives in real time

ACI's physics-informed models enable real-time PPA estimation without synthesis, letting you explore the full design space and find the Pareto-optimal frontier across power, performance, and area.

Satoshi analyzing PPA trade-off visualizations

What you can do

ACI transforms how you approach design optimization — from manual tuning to physics-informed exploration.

1

Pre-Synthesis PPA Estimation

Estimate PPA before synthesis using physics-informed models. Get highly correlated power, performance, and area predictions without waiting for lengthy synthesis runs.

2

Pareto Front Identification

ACI means no zero-sum trade-offs. Identify the Pareto front for competing objectives in real time. Visualize trade-offs between power, performance, area, and other design metrics to make informed decisions.

3

Native PPA Optimizations

Leverage ACI to apply intelligent transformations during model inference and displace long generation-synthesis-(re)verification loops applied retroactively. ACI will formally verify changes to ensure no deviation in functionality.

4

PPA Corner Recentering

Recenter an existing design to different PPA corners. Adapt designs for new process nodes, power envelopes, or performance targets without starting from scratch. Rebalancing the design is natural to ACI — the model is the design.

PPA trade-off analysis

ACI explores hundreds of design configurations simultaneously, visualizing the power, performance, and area trade-offs so you can identify the Pareto-optimal frontier.

Design configuration PPA breakdown
Area reduction by optimization technique
Clock gating
82%
Logic restructuring
71%
Memory optimization
64%
Power gating
58%
Datapath merging
45%
See it in action

Hit timing, then trade it for power

Satoshi sets a 500 MHz target; ACI explores the transformation space, finds the Pareto-optimal points, and rebalances the frontier to cut power 11.2% — every step formally verified.

Optimize a design
Satoshi steering an ACI optimization run

“If you want to unlock meaningful efficiency gains in chip design, you have to do the hard work. Maximum gains only come from integrating models, datasets, and infrastructure into a unified system.”

Faraj Aalaei

Faraj Aalaei, Founder & CEO, Cognichip

Find your optimal design point

Let ACI explore the full PPA landscape while you focus on architecture decisions.

Backed by $93M from Seligman, SBI, Mayfield, Lux Capital, and Candou Ventures