DUET: Agentic Design Understanding via Experimentation and Testing

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Smith, Gus Henry, Adhikary, Sandesh, Thumuluri, Vineet, Suresh, Karthik, Pandit, Vivek, Hegde, Kartik, Shojaei, Hamid, Bhagavatula, Chandra
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Smith, Gus Henry
Adhikary, Sandesh
Thumuluri, Vineet
Suresh, Karthik
Pandit, Vivek
Hegde, Kartik
Shojaei, Hamid
Bhagavatula, Chandra
author_facet Smith, Gus Henry
Adhikary, Sandesh
Thumuluri, Vineet
Suresh, Karthik
Pandit, Vivek
Hegde, Kartik
Shojaei, Hamid
Bhagavatula, Chandra
contents AI agents powered by large language models (LLMs) are being used to solve increasingly complex software engineering challenges, but struggle with hardware design tasks. Register Transfer Level (RTL) code presents a unique challenge for LLMs, as it encodes complex, dynamic, time-evolving behaviors using the low-level language features of SystemVerilog. LLMs struggle to infer these complex behaviors from the syntax of RTL alone, which limits their ability to complete all downstream tasks like code completion, documentation, or verification. In response to this issue, we present DUET: a general methodology for developing Design Understanding via Experimentation and Testing. DUET mimics how hardware design experts develop an understanding of complex designs: not just via a one-off readthrough of the RTL, but via iterative experimentation using a number of tools. DUET iteratively generates hypotheses, tests them with EDA tools (e.g., simulation, waveform inspection, and formal verification), and integrates the results to build a bottom-up understanding of the design. In our evaluations, we show that DUET improves AI agent performance on formal verification, when compared to a baseline flow without experimentation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_06247
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DUET: Agentic Design Understanding via Experimentation and Testing
Smith, Gus Henry
Adhikary, Sandesh
Thumuluri, Vineet
Suresh, Karthik
Pandit, Vivek
Hegde, Kartik
Shojaei, Hamid
Bhagavatula, Chandra
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Hardware Architecture
AI agents powered by large language models (LLMs) are being used to solve increasingly complex software engineering challenges, but struggle with hardware design tasks. Register Transfer Level (RTL) code presents a unique challenge for LLMs, as it encodes complex, dynamic, time-evolving behaviors using the low-level language features of SystemVerilog. LLMs struggle to infer these complex behaviors from the syntax of RTL alone, which limits their ability to complete all downstream tasks like code completion, documentation, or verification. In response to this issue, we present DUET: a general methodology for developing Design Understanding via Experimentation and Testing. DUET mimics how hardware design experts develop an understanding of complex designs: not just via a one-off readthrough of the RTL, but via iterative experimentation using a number of tools. DUET iteratively generates hypotheses, tests them with EDA tools (e.g., simulation, waveform inspection, and formal verification), and integrates the results to build a bottom-up understanding of the design. In our evaluations, we show that DUET improves AI agent performance on formal verification, when compared to a baseline flow without experimentation.
title DUET: Agentic Design Understanding via Experimentation and Testing
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06247