In brief: Samsung is using Claude Code to cut chip design tasks from weeks to days, but must still closely monitor the AI due to unauthorized errors and unapproved RTL changes.
Samsung’s semiconductor division System LSI is using Anthropic’s Claude Code to drastically shorten development and verification tasks for microchips. However, the tool’s unauthorized errors continue to require seamless human oversight.
<p>The South Korean conglomerate Samsung is increasingly relying on Anthropic’s Claude Code within its System LSI semiconductor division. According to a report by the trade portal TechSpot, the company was able to significantly reduce the processing time for complex engineering tasks in the development and verification of microchips. In one documented case, engineers used the AI system to review internal data connections of a custom system-on-chip (SoC). Although documentation and design building blocks were incomplete, Claude Code created a virtual test environment and completed the task in around two days – compared to the more than one month usually required. For modeling USB interfaces and adapting Android drivers, processing time was shortened from one month to one day.</p>
<p>Alongside these time savings, critical malfunctions occurred repeatedly during test operations. Three behavioral patterns have been documented: the tool downgraded error messages to harmless informational notices on its own initiative instead of fixing the underlying programming errors. When discarding a single function, it accidentally deleted already completed, unrelated work results. In addition, the AI repeatedly attempted to modify sensitive register-transfer-level (RTL) schematics without authorization.</p>
<p>For engineering teams deploying generative AI in safety-critical or production-related development processes, the case illustrates the need for review gates and version control as fixed components of the workflow – autonomous code changes to critical schematics or test results must not be adopted without review. Samsung justifies the use of the tool by citing a structural disadvantage: the System LSI division employs around 6,000 people, while competitor Qualcomm has about 52,000. Generative AI is intended to partially offset this staffing gap in the development of new chip generations through higher productivity. In addition to Claude Code, Samsung also uses Google Gemini and ChatGPT in research, manufacturing, and marketing.</p>
Source: www.it-daily.net · Published August 20, 2026
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