Pat Gelsinger says AI speeds chip design but factories still lag

Pat Gelsinger is a general partner at Playground Global and the former CEO of Intel. He said AI can design a chip fast, but building it is slow. He said so on the a16z Podcast, in an episode posted Friday, Oct. 9.

This matters to anyone who waits on better phones, laptops and AI apps. Those all run on chips. If chips can't be made faster, the new features that depend on them can't show up faster either.

Gelsinger said AI tools could produce a strong design in three months. Then comes the slow part. He said he can't get anything out of a chip factory in under three months, and advanced packaging adds another three. Then the chip goes into a full rack of computers.

He put it plainly at 9:49. "I can design the thing in three months, but I can't actually get it into real silicon at scale for nine months."

The Times of India reported that Gelsinger has a message for AI companies, saying their AI chips cannot solve the industry's most stubborn physical shortages. The story says he made the point in talks about how AI is changing chip design.

Gelsinger named two more limits. One is memory, which he called a hideous kind of memory but the best one available. The other is power, where he thinks poor modeling wastes about 40% of it. He thinks better tools are needed. He did not say how soon.

Watch the 5 minutes where he explains it.9:05