Samsung has reportedly turned to AI to speed up one of the slowest and most demanding parts of designing chips. According to a report from Chosun Biz, the company’s engineers are using Anthropic’s Claude to dramatically accelerate certain tasks, with one project reportedly completed roughly fifteen times faster than usual.
Samsung cut one chip verification task from over a month to two days
The report states that Samsung Electronics’ System LSI division has been using Claude Code for semiconductor verification and general software development. The company gave developers access to the tool in May before expanding its use to specialized chip design work.
With Claude’s help, engineers reportedly completed the verification environment and testing for an SoC project, a task that was expected to take more than a month, in just two days. In another case, a second-year engineer with no prior experience with Claude Code or USB communication standards reportedly completed a task that would normally take about a month in just one day.
AI could help Samsung make up for its smaller chip design workforce
These results could be particularly important for the System LSI division, which has a much smaller workforce than some of its biggest competitors. The report estimates that the division has around 6,000 employees, while its main rival Qualcomm has over 52,000.
Samsung appears to be using AI to narrow that gap by delegating repetitive tasks and helping engineers work with unfamiliar technologies. However, the company isn’t treating Claude as a replacement for human engineers, as it has encountered cases where the AI misunderstood instructions, changed unrelated work, or attempted to modify circuit design code when it was only supposed to analyze verification results.
To prevent such issues, Samsung is keeping engineers in the loop to define what Claude works on and to check its output before anything moves forward. If the company can keep errors in check, Claude could give Samsung’s smaller chip design team the productivity boost it needs to compete with much larger rivals.
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