Himax Accelerates Chip Design with Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer

By Vinod Khera

August 1, 2025

Himax Technologies Inc., a leading supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products, has successfully deployed Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, automated solution designed to optimize chip design flows and accelerate product development.

Capable of concurrently optimizing multiple blocks, the Cadence solution offers a critical advantage for managing the growing complexity of today’s system-on-chip (SoC) designs. This strategic adoption not only underscores Himax’s commitment to innovation and efficiency in advanced semiconductor engineering but also showcases the transformative power of AI in streamlining complex development processes.

Faced with challenges such as design efficiency, design rule checks (DRCs), timing closure, and performance optimizations, Himax extensively evaluated the Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer. The results were substantial, showing significant improvements in productivity and design quality. In its tests, Himax reported an impressive 5.6X increase in productivity on one design, a 50% reduction in DRCs, and successful timing closure. Another design yielded a staggering 30X productivity improvement, a 70% decrease in DRCs, and 60% better performance outcomes.

“As chip design complexity grows, we are continually seeking cutting-edge solutions to help Himax innovate in today’s rapidly evolving semiconductor landscape. Efficient product delivery is critical to our competitiveness in the display and imaging chip markets,” said Samuel Kuo, Associate Vice President of Smart Sensing Business at Himax. “Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer has significantly boosted our engineering productivity, delivering over 30 times improvement on some of our most complex designs. Based on these outstanding results, we are now rolling it out across all IC design teams, unlocking new efficiencies that enable us to bring smarter, faster, and cost-effective solutions to market.”

Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer’s automated AI-driven design optimization capabilities facilitate optimizing for power, performance, and area (PPA) far more efficiently than a traditional manual iterative approach, thereby reducing time to market (TTM).

“Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer continues to validate its role as a productivity game-changer for innovative companies like Himax,” said Ram Iyer, senior group director R&D, DSG-ML at Cadence. “We are excited to see that our AI-based solutions are helping clients tackle design complexities while delivering impressive results.”

The adoption of Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer empowers Himax's engineering teams by automating the design optimization process, thereby allowing them to focus on higher-level innovation and creativity. As Himax embraces this next-generation technology, the company is well-positioned to reduce its TTM and maintain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving semiconductor landscape.

The Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer is an innovative, AI-driven, automated approach to chip design flow optimization. By adopting Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer, engineers can concurrently optimize the flow for multiple blocks. This is especially important for the large, complex SoC designs needed for today’s increasingly powerful electronic systems.

If you're ready to transform your design process and achieve similar results, explore the capabilities of Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer and Cadence Cerebrus AI Studio.