Technical discussion on AI MAPS

Friday 25 Apr 2025, 09:00 → 10:00 America/New_York

ZOOM link

Dropbox paper for round-table discussion

analysis note overleaf

1 News and review of action items

Speakers: Gian Michele Innocenti (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jelena Lalic (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

2 Update

Speaker: Dominic Stewart-Guido (student@mit.edu)

Status of the flow for Dominic and Tibor https://indico.mit.edu/event/1505/:

 

• Dominic: Has the full flow working till the step with Vivado ; Focusing on the quantization metrics and their impact on the neural network size, performance, etc.. Collecting material on this;
   
• Tibor: ?? - no news
   
• Abraham: produced neural network with QKeras, produced C++ files with hls4ml, built it with Vivado and produced verilog files;
  
  All the files (hls4ml + Vivado): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/26ka2tcsfyqb5vglsvyp1/keras_model.h5?rlkey=i75istqkppcd693ytn541f6hc&st=xfac3xob&dl=0

 

 

3 Next Steps - Quantization with QKeras

Speakers: Abraham Holtermann (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jelena Lalic (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  We need to establish a clear tooling plan for full ASIC implementation

Step	Purpose	Tool	Vendor	Approx. Price (Annual)
HLS	C++/SystemC → RTL (Verilog/VHDL)	Catapult HLS	Siemens EDA	TBD (Follow-up needed)
Logic Synthesis	RTL → Gates	Genus	Cadence	~$100,000
Physical Design	Place & Route (P&R)	Innovus	Cadence	~$100,000
Static Timing Analysis (STA)	Timing sign-off	Innovus	Cadence / Synopsys	/
Physical Verification	DRC/LVS	Innovus	Cadence / Synopsys	/
Power Analysis	Power estimation/signoff	Voltus / PrimePower	Cadence / Synopsys	??

 

 

Action items:
 - Contact Siemens EDA (Catapult pricing & trial)

 - Verify Cadence tools access (Genus, Innovus) via MIT (my knowledge is in using Cadence tools, didnt use Synopsys tools before)

- Draft full ASIC flow with tool versions, licenses, costs (we need a tool for simulation and verification, need more detailed sheet on what Catapult does)