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Cadence has been named the 2026 TSMC Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Partner of the Year, receiving five awards recognizing its collaboration with TSMC across technologies that are shaping AI-era semiconductor design. Announced at the TSMC 2026 North America OIP Ecosystem Forum, the awards reflect five areas of collaboration: COUPE on substrate design solutions, agentic AI design solutions, scaling ecosystem's advanced-node design expertise, HPC and AI memory IP, and consumer and mobile DSP IP.
It is a recognition of both the breadth of the Cadence–TSMC collaboration and the technologies driving the next generation of semiconductor innovation.
Together, the five awards highlight how the two companies are helping customers address growing design complexity, improve productivity, and accelerate innovation in advanced silicon across AI, HPC, mobile, and consumer applications.
Collaboration for the AI Era
As AI reshapes semiconductor innovation from hyperscale infrastructure to edge intelligence, delivering next-generation silicon increasingly depends on deep ecosystem collaboration across foundries, EDA, IP, cloud, design services, and design teams. Through the OIP ecosystem, TSMC works with a comprehensive set of partners to strengthen design enablement and shorten time to market.
At this year's forum, themed "Expanding AI with Leadership Ecosystem," TSMC highlighted ecosystem collaboration across advanced process technologies, 3DFabric® advanced stacking and packaging, TSMC-COUPETM co-packaged optics, AI-driven EDA tools, agentic AI flows, IP portfolios, cloud environments, and design services.
Five TSMC OIP Partner of the Year Awards
Cadence was recognized across five technology categories that reflect the evolving needs of semiconductor design in the AI era.
Joint Development of Design Solutions for COUPE on Substrate
Cadence received recognition for its contributions to design methodologies that address the key demands of TSMC-COUPETM on-substrate integration.
As systems require higher bandwidth and greater energy efficiency, co-packaged optics is becoming increasingly important for next-generation AI and HPC architectures. Cadence and TSMC collaboration in this area helps establish the methodologies customers need to integrate optical and electrical technologies more effectively.
Joint Collaboration on Agentic AI Design Solutions
Cadence was recognized for its collaboration with TSMC on agentic AI design solutions, including contributions toward improving PPA, quality, and engineering productivity by incorporating AI agents into design flows.
By bringing more autonomous, goal-driven optimization into established semiconductor design flows, agentic AI can help engineering teams manage complexity, reduce manual effort, and accelerate progress across demanding design tasks.
Scaling Ecosystem's Advanced-Node Design Expertise
Cadence was recognized for collaborating with TSMC on partner training programs to scale support for mutual customers.
As leading-edge technologies become more complex, customer success depends not only on certified tools and flows but also on a skilled ecosystem capable of supporting implementation, deployment, and adoption at advanced nodes.
HPC and AI Memory IP
Cadence received recognition for enabling customer designs with a broad IP portfolio that helps accelerate design creation.
As AI workloads scale, memory bandwidth and data movement are increasingly critical to system performance. Cadence IP helps customers reduce integration risk and accelerate development of next-generation AI and HPC systems.
Consumer and Mobile DSP IP
Cadence was also recognized for enabling customer designs through DSP IP solutions for consumer and mobile applications.
DSP technologies are foundational to AI-enabled edge devices, smartphones, multimedia processing, and signal-processing workloads. This recognition reflects Cadence collaboration with TSMC to help customers bring differentiated products to market more efficiently.
A Longstanding History of Collaboration
The 2026 awards build on a multi-year history of collaboration between Cadence and TSMC across advanced-node design infrastructure, 3D-IC technologies, cloud-based productivity solutions, RF design solutions, silicon photonics, AI-assisted design solutions, COUPE multi-wavelength design solutions, memory IP, and DSP IP.
Enabling the Future of Semiconductor Design
The 2026 recognitions show how the Cadence–TSMC collaboration continues to evolve with the industry—from advanced-node design infrastructure to AI-driven methodologies, chiplet-based architectures, 3D-IC integration, advanced packaging, co-packaged optics, and agentic AI workflows.
As AI drives new requirements for advanced silicon and integrated systems, the 2026 award categories reflect the technologies shaping semiconductor innovation and the role of ecosystem collaboration in helping customers address increasingly complex design challenges, accelerate innovation, and bring next-generation semiconductor products to market.
