Synopsys, Microsoft team up for a chip-design assistant

FILE PHOTO: A man walks through the Synopsys booth during the Black Hat information security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on July 26, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo

(Reuters) -Microsoft has mostly pitched its "Copilot" as a way to help finish up lines of computer code or quickly summarize a messy email inbox. But Synopsys on Wednesday said it has worked with Microsoft to create its own Copilot to help with designing computer chips.

Chip design is one of the hardest tasks in the technology industry because billions of transistors - tiny on-off switches - must be precisely arranged on a piece of silicon just a few centimeters wide. Designing a chip typically costs hundreds of millions of dollars and takes several years, even with an army of engineers.