Experiment: you think LLMs can innovate on chip design? Ask it to do something much simpler: invent a new better sorting algorithm. We use names such as Timsort or Djikstra for a specific reason: because it requires rare human ingenuity to invent such things. If an LLM can’t invent a new sorting algorithm that is meaningfully better in some way than existing known algorithms, then good luck on something much harder like chip design.

You can set the bar lower. Have it invent another n log n sorting algorithm. Or omit all merge sort implementations from training data and see if it can re-invent it.

But I certainly agree in general. It’s been years and there are still no independent novel discoveries afaik.

As long as the chip isn’t expected to count the number of Rs in strawberry, I don’t see why an LLM couldn’t design a better chip.