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Main Authors: Oestreich, Julian, Bley, Maximilian, Binder, Frank, Müller, Lydia, Sydorenko, Maksym, Alcalde, André
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23047
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author Oestreich, Julian
Bley, Maximilian
Binder, Frank
Müller, Lydia
Sydorenko, Maksym
Alcalde, André
author_facet Oestreich, Julian
Bley, Maximilian
Binder, Frank
Müller, Lydia
Sydorenko, Maksym
Alcalde, André
contents Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) fine-tuning has shown substantial improvements over vanilla RAG, yet most studies target document question answering and often rely on standard NLP metrics that can obscure factual differences. We evaluate RAG fine-tuning for long-form text generation in electronic design automation, adapting a 7B model under five context augmentation strategies with varying retrieval conditions. We introduce TriFEX, a human-validated, triple-based evaluation pipeline that attributes generated claims to their origin-user query, context and reference-and propose Parametric Knowledge Precision (PKP), which isolates internalized knowledge by filtering out claims leaked in the prompt. We show that ROUGE and BERTScore fail to detect factual differences that our triple-based evaluation reveals. Additionally, we demonstrate that an existing metric for knowledge internalization is retrieva-sensitive, with about 75% of its cross-condition variance driven by changes in the rate at which internal knowledge is expressed (PR), rather than by changes in its actual correctness (PKP). The fine-tuned 7B variants outperform a 72B baseline on most metrics, further showing generalization across conditions and on a related benchmark. These results underscore the limitations of available metrics in RAG evaluation and show that smaller models could be reasonably well adapted to specialized tasks for cost-efficient, on-premises deployment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_23047
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Parametric Knowledge and Retrieval Behavior in RAG Fine-Tuning for Electronic Design Automation
Oestreich, Julian
Bley, Maximilian
Binder, Frank
Müller, Lydia
Sydorenko, Maksym
Alcalde, André
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) fine-tuning has shown substantial improvements over vanilla RAG, yet most studies target document question answering and often rely on standard NLP metrics that can obscure factual differences. We evaluate RAG fine-tuning for long-form text generation in electronic design automation, adapting a 7B model under five context augmentation strategies with varying retrieval conditions. We introduce TriFEX, a human-validated, triple-based evaluation pipeline that attributes generated claims to their origin-user query, context and reference-and propose Parametric Knowledge Precision (PKP), which isolates internalized knowledge by filtering out claims leaked in the prompt. We show that ROUGE and BERTScore fail to detect factual differences that our triple-based evaluation reveals. Additionally, we demonstrate that an existing metric for knowledge internalization is retrieva-sensitive, with about 75% of its cross-condition variance driven by changes in the rate at which internal knowledge is expressed (PR), rather than by changes in its actual correctness (PKP). The fine-tuned 7B variants outperform a 72B baseline on most metrics, further showing generalization across conditions and on a related benchmark. These results underscore the limitations of available metrics in RAG evaluation and show that smaller models could be reasonably well adapted to specialized tasks for cost-efficient, on-premises deployment.
title Parametric Knowledge and Retrieval Behavior in RAG Fine-Tuning for Electronic Design Automation
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23047