China claims to have developed the world's first AI-designed processor — LLM turned performance requests into CPU architecture

QiMeng AI-based chip design system .

China’s leading scientific institution has taken the wraps off QiMeng, an AI-powered system designed to accelerate chip design. The new open-source project from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) uses LLMs for “fully automated hardware and software design,” and can be used to design “entire CPUs.” But sample chips, so far, seem rather puny.

QiMeng means ‘enlightenment,’ according to an SCMP report on its unveiling. As of now, two processors have been created using QiMeng: QiMeng-CPU-v1, which is comparable to an Intel 486; and QiMeng-CPU-v2, which is claimed to rival an Arm Cortex A53. At the time of writing, CAS's link to the QiMeng-CPU-v2 project details is broken.