On 2026-09-19, Synopsys Senior Vice President Steve Pytel said in a Seoul interview that heat is a key bottleneck impeding AI semiconductor performance gains, as rising AI chip integration density increases heat generation and causes performance degradation. He said 3D integrated circuits (3D ICs), with multiple chips densely packed in tight spaces, transfer heat from chips and packages to the cooling burden of servers and data centers, making heat dissipation across all elements—from chips to data centers—the core challenge, which requires simulating the entire system at the design stage rather than individual components. Pytel earned his Ph.D. in Signal Integrity from the University of South Carolina, worked as a senior engineer at Intel, joined Ansys in 2007, led simulation product development across electronics, mechanical, and fluid domains for approximately 19 years, and assumed his current role after Ansys was acquired by Synopsys. Synopsys supplies electronic design automation (EDA) software and design IP, had fiscal 2025 revenue of $7.054 billion (approximately 9.49 trillion won), supplies design tools and IP for Samsung Electronics' foundry 2-nanometer process, and collaborates with SK Hynix and others. Synopsys agreed in January 2024 to acquire Ansys for approximately $35 billion, completing the process in July of the following year. Pytel cited "physics-aware design," and the companies' flagship achievement is "Mult