The world's first open-source chip design large model, SemiKong, has been officially launched. Based on the fine-tuning of Llama3, it outperforms general large models. This is not only a technological breakthrough but also a victory for the open-source spirit, signaling a profound change in the semiconductor industry, valued at $5 trillion, within the next five years.
The birth of SemiKong marks a significant step forward for AI in the field of chip design. Developed by Aitomatic and FPT Software, it made its debut at Semicon West 2024 and garnered widespread industry attention. This open-source large model not only excels in industry-specific tasks compared to general large models but has also made significant progress in accuracy, relevance, and understanding of semiconductor processes.
Official Website: https://www.semikong.ai/
Project Address: https://github.com/aitomatic/semikong
The open-source AI model for chip design, which has been shared by industry giants like LeCun, has its code weights publicly available on Hugging Face and GitHub for global developers to download and use. This unprecedented open initiative in a highly competitive and secretive semiconductor industry is undoubtedly a bold attempt.
Christopher Nguyen, CEO of Aitomatic, stated that the company chose to go open-source because they believe the benefits of sharing research and development achievements at the foundational level far outweigh the value of secrecy. They hope to stimulate more innovation and competition through open-source to promote the development of the entire industry.
The training process of the SemiKong model consists of three stages: pre-training domain knowledge, self-fine-tuning, and merging quantization. With 8B parameters, it has been specifically trained on semiconductor domain knowledge, providing a powerful foundational platform for chip companies to build proprietary models tailored to their needs.
The emergence of SemiKong is not only expected to accelerate innovation in the semiconductor industry but also to reduce production costs. In the coming years, consumers may find that more powerful smartphones, laptops, and smart home devices enter the market at lower prices.
Even more excitingly, the next version of SemiKong is scheduled for release in December this year, with the first process-specific model expected to be released in September. This marks the semiconductor industry's imminent entry into a new era.
The birth of SemiKong is the result of the joint efforts of the AI Alliance. Christopher Nguyen, as one of the leaders of the AI Alliance, laid the foundation for this breakthrough achievement with his visionary insights and spirit of open collaboration.
The industry has given SemiKong very high praise. Atsushi Suzuki, Director of Product Lifecycle Management at Tokyo Electron and an AI Alliance product manager, said that SemiKong represents an important step forward for the application of AI in the semiconductor manufacturing field. Phong Nguyen, Chief AI Officer at FPT Software, also expressed his belief that SemiKong will consolidate FPT Software's leading position in the global semiconductor industry.
