VHDL-Eval: A Framework for Evaluating Large Language Models in VHDL Code Generation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Vijayaraghavan, Prashanth, Shi, Luyao, Ambrogio, Stefano, Mackin, Charles, Nitsure, Apoorva, Beymer, David, Degan, Ehsan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Vijayaraghavan, Prashanth
Shi, Luyao
Ambrogio, Stefano
Mackin, Charles
Nitsure, Apoorva
Beymer, David
Degan, Ehsan
author_facet Vijayaraghavan, Prashanth
Shi, Luyao
Ambrogio, Stefano
Mackin, Charles
Nitsure, Apoorva
Beymer, David
Degan, Ehsan
contents With the unprecedented advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs), their application domains have expanded to include code generation tasks across various programming languages. While significant progress has been made in enhancing LLMs for popular programming languages, there exists a notable gap in comprehensive evaluation frameworks tailored for Hardware Description Languages (HDLs), particularly VHDL. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a comprehensive evaluation framework designed specifically for assessing LLM performance in VHDL code generation task. We construct a dataset for evaluating LLMs on VHDL code generation task. This dataset is constructed by translating a collection of Verilog evaluation problems to VHDL and aggregating publicly available VHDL problems, resulting in a total of 202 problems. To assess the functional correctness of the generated VHDL code, we utilize a curated set of self-verifying testbenches specifically designed for those aggregated VHDL problem set. We conduct an initial evaluation of different LLMs and their variants, including zero-shot code generation, in-context learning (ICL), and Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods. Our findings underscore the considerable challenges faced by existing LLMs in VHDL code generation, revealing significant scope for improvement. This study emphasizes the necessity of supervised fine-tuning code generation models specifically for VHDL, offering potential benefits to VHDL designers seeking efficient code generation solutions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_04379
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VHDL-Eval: A Framework for Evaluating Large Language Models in VHDL Code Generation
Vijayaraghavan, Prashanth
Shi, Luyao
Ambrogio, Stefano
Mackin, Charles
Nitsure, Apoorva
Beymer, David
Degan, Ehsan
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
With the unprecedented advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs), their application domains have expanded to include code generation tasks across various programming languages. While significant progress has been made in enhancing LLMs for popular programming languages, there exists a notable gap in comprehensive evaluation frameworks tailored for Hardware Description Languages (HDLs), particularly VHDL. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a comprehensive evaluation framework designed specifically for assessing LLM performance in VHDL code generation task. We construct a dataset for evaluating LLMs on VHDL code generation task. This dataset is constructed by translating a collection of Verilog evaluation problems to VHDL and aggregating publicly available VHDL problems, resulting in a total of 202 problems. To assess the functional correctness of the generated VHDL code, we utilize a curated set of self-verifying testbenches specifically designed for those aggregated VHDL problem set. We conduct an initial evaluation of different LLMs and their variants, including zero-shot code generation, in-context learning (ICL), and Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods. Our findings underscore the considerable challenges faced by existing LLMs in VHDL code generation, revealing significant scope for improvement. This study emphasizes the necessity of supervised fine-tuning code generation models specifically for VHDL, offering potential benefits to VHDL designers seeking efficient code generation solutions.
title VHDL-Eval: A Framework for Evaluating Large Language Models in VHDL Code Generation
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04379