The world’s first fabrication and design of a silicon chip without direct human input has been completed by researchers at the University of Limerick, it has been claimed. This “could pave the way for a new era of automated digital circuit design with Ireland at its centre, creating a new export industry with many well-paying jobs”, professor of machine learning at the University of Limerick, Conor Ryan, said. “This is the first time ever anywhere in the world that machine learning has been used to design and fabricate a silicon chip entirely from scratch,” Prof Ryan, leader of the research team working on the chip, pointed out. The team in Limerick plans to work with selected companies to make these chips, following their collaboration with chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) during the project.