AI chips need trust, not just test passes, says Renesas India chief

Semiconductor verification must move beyond passing tests to building trust in intelligent machines, Malini Narayanamoorthi, president of Renesas India, said at the ETElectronicsWorld Design & Verification Summit 2026 in Bengaluru.

Delivering the opening address, Narayanamoorthi argued that physical AI applications in robotics, sensing and connectivity create far more complex system-level requirements. She illustrated the point with the example of a legally blind and mobility-impaired engineer who helped develop an automated kitchen, showing that safety failures in assistive technology carry real human costs.

Narayanamoorthi said roughly 20% of the world's chip-design talent is in India and urged Indian engineers to build for local problems rather than only serving global specifications. Trust, she said, must be designed into architecture from the start, not treated as a downstream check.