Fermilab Leads AI Push to Speed Extreme-Environment Chip Design

A multi-lab team led by Fermilab and drawn from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories is using AI to sharply accelerate the design of custom microelectronics chips built to operate in extreme environments such as cryogenic cold, high radiation and ultra-fast switching, through a project called AXESS (Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon). The effort aims to compress the path from specification to silicon from several months to minutes or weeks, with details published in Fermilab's news in May 2026.