Unveiled at SEMICON West 2024, SemiKong aims to revolutionise semiconductor processes and fabrication technology, and could potentially reshape the $500bn semiconductor industry in the next five years.
SemiKong is the result of a collaborative effort within the AI Alliance, an industry-wide initiative promoting open and responsible AI development. Built upon the open-source Llama3 model from Meta, an AI Alliance member, SemiKong leverages expertise from leading semiconductor companies, including Tokyo Electron, and AI specialists like FPT Software – highlighting the AI Alliance's commitment to open science and cross-industry innovation.
In industry-specific tasks, SemiKong demonstrates marked improvements in accuracy, relevance, and understanding of semiconductor processes, often outperforming larger general-purpose models. This performance boost offers potential for accelerated innovation and reduced costs across the semiconductor value chain.
Dr. Christopher Nguyen, CEO of Aitomatic and Co-Lead of the Foundation Models Focus Area in the AI Alliance, said, "SemiKong is set to redefine semiconductor manufacturing. This open innovation model, enabled by the AI Alliance, harnesses collective expertise for industry-specific challenges. At Aitomatic, we're using SemiKong to create Domain-Specific AI Agents that tackle complex fabrication problems with unprecedented effectiveness."
Dr. Yann LeCun, VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, added, "SemiKong, built on Llama3, shows open-source AI's potential to drive specialised innovation. It's a prime example of why we advocate for AI openness."
"As an industry expert collaborating through the AI Alliance, I believe SemiKong represents a significant step forward in applying AI to semiconductor manufacturing,” said Atsushi Suzuki, Director of Product Lifecycle Management DX at Tokyo Electron and AI Alliance member.
As SemiKong helps to drive down semiconductor production costs, consumers could see more powerful smartphones, laptops, and smart home devices at lower prices within the next few years.
Aitomatic, Tokyo Electron, and FPT Software are all AI Alliance members. Founded in 2023, the AI Alliance builds, enables, and advocates for open innovation across the AI technology landscape, including software, data and models, safety, security and trust, tooling, evaluation, hardware, education, open science, and advocacy.
SemiKong was developed as one of AI Alliance core projects addressing substantial cross-community challenges and providing an opportunity for individual contributors and members to collaborate, build, and make an impact on the future of AI.
Dr. Anthony Annunziata, IBM Director of AI Open Innovation and AI Alliance Engagement, commented: "This work exemplifies how The AI Alliance's mission of open collaboration can bring together diverse expertise to drive advancement in applying AI to critical industries like semiconductor manufacturing."
SemiKong will be available for download on HuggingFace and GitHub. It serves as a foundation for companies to develop proprietary models while leveraging industry-wide knowledge. The next, more powerful version of SemiKong is planned for December 2024, with the first process-specific models expected by September 2024.
