Vinci4D Inc., a provider of simulation software for chip designers, has secured $46 million in funding to enhance its technology.

The startup raised the capital over two rounds that it announced on Tuesday. The financing came from Xora Innovation, Eclipse and Khosla Ventures.

A new chip design goes through many rounds of testing before it’s sent to a fab for production. Typically, several of the tests involve simulation tools. Those tools create a virtual replica of the chip and evaluate how it would behave in different scenarios. For example, engineers might wish to simulate the impact of temperature fluctuations on a DRAM module’s performance.

Simulation tools use a method known as FEA, or finite element analysis, to study the properties of physical objects. The basic idea behind FEA is to render a virtual replica of an object and then break down the replica into smaller elements. Those smaller elements are then each analyzed separately, which is faster than running calculations on the entire object.

Palo Alto, California-based Vinci positions its namesake simulation platform as an alternative to FEA tools. The software can simulate certain chip details with a resolution of two nanometers, which the company says is better than what FEA-powered rivals provide. Furthermore, Vinci claims that it generates simulations up to 1,000 times faster in some cases.

The company’s platform is powered by a custom artificial intelligence model. According to Vinci, the model avoids hallucinations by verifying results with the same equations that traditional simulation tools use to study chip properties. Customers don’t have to train the AI on their internal engineering datasets before putting it to use.

Chip designers can launch a Vinci project by uploading a technical description of the device they wish to simulate. The description must include details such as the number of layers that the device comprises, their thickness and the materials from which they’re made. Engineers must also provide thermal data such as whether heat moves through a semiconductor faster in some directions than in others.

In its current iteration, Vinci’s platform focuses on simulating chips’ thermal properties. Engineers can use the software to study parameters such as when and how excess heat might decrease a processor’s reliability. Vinci outputs simulation results as a CSV spreadsheet that it can optionally visualize in graphs.

The company says its platform lends itself to simulating a wide range of devices. The software can create virtual replicas of logic circuits, memory and the interconnect that links together a processor’s different components. It’s also capable of simulating larger devices such as electronics enclosures.

According to Vinci, the platform has been deployed by three “leading semiconductor manufacturers.” More than 10 other chipmakers have benchmarked the software against their FEA tools. It claims its software matched or topped the accuracy of traditional simulation methods in all of those evaluations.

“Vinci empowers engineers to simulate how designs will perform in seconds instead of days, at a fraction of the compute cost,” said founder and Chief Executive Officer Hardik Kabaria. “On next-generation geometries that conventional tools must simplify, such as nanometer-scale components on centimeter-scale dies, Vinci maintains full-fidelity accuracy.”

Reuters reported that the company will use its new funding to broaden its feature set. The development effort will reportedly focus on adding support for additional use cases besides studying devices’ thermal properties.

Image: Vinci