According to Synopsys the agreement expands Amazon’s access to Synopsys semiconductor intellectual property and electronic design automation tools. The two companies have worked together for more than 15 years, but this arrangement takes their relationship considerably further.
Amazon already develops several families of custom silicon, including Graviton processors for general-purpose computing, Trainium accelerators for AI training and inference, and Nitro chips for cloud security, networking and storage. The agreement covers technology intended to accelerate development across its chip portfolio.
Synopsys will supply application-optimised silicon IP, allowing Amazon to incorporate specialised building blocks into future processors. The deal introduces a licensing and royalty arrangement, meaning Synopsys could collect additional revenue as production volumes increase.
The companies are expanding their work on electronic design automation, simulation and analysis software. These tools help engineers design, verify and optimise increasingly complicated semiconductor architectures before committing them to manufacturing.
The overly lengthy-titled Amazon senior vice-president of foundational AI, custom silicon and quantum computing, Peter DeSantis said: “From Graviton to Trainium, purpose-built chips deliver better performance at lower cost because they’re designed for exactly what customers need. As our chip designs grow more ambitious and AI reshapes the engineering process itself, Synopsys helps us move faster across the design cycle, helping us deliver more capable, efficient computing for customers worldwide.”
The collaboration extends into AI-assisted semiconductor engineering, where Synopsys intends to deploy software capable of automating parts of the design and verification process. The companies plan to develop customised AI agents to help Amazon’s engineers analyse, optimise and validate complex processors and systems.
Synopsys president and chief executive Sassine Ghazi said: “Special purpose silicon is at the heart of AWS innovation. As we expand into application-optimised IP solutions, we’re proud to have Amazon as our lead customer for this next phase of growth.”
The arrangement is rather circular. Synopsys will use Amazon’s computing infrastructure to develop the tools that Amazon needs to design its next generation of processors. Its engineers will adopt Amazon EC2, cloud storage and Amazon Bedrock for AI application development.
Synopsys intends to optimise its software for Amazon’s Trainium and Graviton processors, including work on multiphysics simulation. These workloads examine the electrical, thermal and mechanical behaviour of increasingly complicated semiconductor designs.
For Amazon, the arrangement strengthens its efforts to develop alternatives to commercially available processors and AI accelerators. Custom silicon gives the cloud giant greater control over hardware specifications and infrastructure costs, although the companies have not identified which future processors will incorporate the new Synopsys IP.
The agreement marks a significant expansion of Synopsys’ silicon licensing business, with Amazon serving as the lead customer for its application-optimised IP strategy. Neither company has disclosed specific chip designs, manufacturing partners or product launch schedules associated with the deal.
