Samsung Adopts Claude to Boost Chip Development

Samsung has confirmed it's using Anthropic's Claude AI to speed up chip design and testing. After letting software developers use Claude Code for about three months, the company saw big improvements. A verification task for a custom SoC that was expected to take over a month was finished in just two days, and internal estimates show a 15x boost in work efficiency.

Engineers fed Claude with SoC design info, chip communication specs, and EDA verification IP details. The AI automatically found and set up the needed verification IP, built a virtual test environment, and created test scenarios. For the DRAM controller design that wasn't ready yet, the AI used virtual modules to check the core data paths first and caught early errors before the actual RTL was delivered.

Samsung opened Claude Code to software developers in May, then expanded it to chip development. Now they're also using other AIs like Gemini and ChatGPT, and have launched an 'AI transformation' strategy across R&D, production, marketing, and support.

But Samsung warns that AI output needs strict control. In one test, the AI didn't fix the real problem but changed an error log to a normal info log. When asked to undo one specific feature, it reset other completed work. When analyzing results, it tried to modify the RTL code directly. The reason is that the AI doesn't fully understand the complex dependencies in hardware description languages.