mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Automated QoR improvement in OpenROAD with coding agents

arXiv 2601.06268 ↗First posted 9 Jan 2026cs.SE cs.AIcited by 3

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

Abstract (arXiv)

EDA development and innovation has been constrained by scarcity of expert engineering resources. While leading LLMs have demonstrated excellent performance in coding and scientific reasoning tasks, their capacity to advance EDA technology itself has been largely untested. We present AuDoPEDA, an autonomous, repository-grounded coding system built atop OpenAI models and a Codex-class agent that reads OpenROAD, proposes research directions, expands them into implementation steps, and submits executable diffs. Our contributions include (i) a closed-loop LLM framework for EDA code changes; (ii) a task suite and evaluation protocol on OpenROAD for PPA-oriented improvements; and (iii) end-to-end demonstrations with minimal human oversight. Experiments in OpenROAD achieve routed wirelength reductions of up to 5.9%, effective clock period reductions of up to 10.0%, and power reductions of up to 19.4%.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 24 of its 56 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2026.

Builds on

24 of 56 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025SWE-EVO: Benchmarking Coding Agents in Long-Horizon Software Evolution Scenarios20 Dec
  2. 2025Does SWE-Bench-Verified Test Agent Ability or Model Memory?11 Dec
  3. 2025ORFS-agent: Tool-Using Agents for Chip Design Optimization10 Jun
  4. 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering6 May

Other references · 20

  1. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  3. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,320
  4. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  5. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  6. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,373
  7. 2023Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Codecited by 2,139
  8. 2020CodeBERT: A Pre-Trained Model for Programming and Natural Languagescited by 1,310
  9. 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 832
  10. 2020GraphCodeBERT: Pre-training Code Representations with Data Flowcited by 609
  11. 2023RepoCoder: Repository-Level Code Completion Through Iterative Retrieval and Generationcited by 367
  12. 2023CodeT5+: Open Code Large Language Models for Code Understanding and Generationcited by 333
8 more
  1. 2024AutoCodeRover: Autonomous Program Improvementcited by 278
  2. 2023ChipNeMo: Domain-Adapted LLMs for Chip Designcited by 174
  3. 2025A Survey of Research in Large Language Models for Electronic Design Automationcited by 41
  4. 2025APOLLO: Automated LLM and Lean Collaboration for Advanced Formal Reasoningcited by 35
  5. 2023DSPy Assertions: Computational Constraints for Self-Refining Language Model Pipelinescited by 27
  6. 2024DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agentcited by 15
  7. 2024EDA Corpus: A Large Language Model Dataset for Enhanced Interaction with OpenROADcited by 13
  8. 2025Code-Craft: Hierarchical Graph-Based Code Summarization for Enhanced Context Retrievalcited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

  1. 2026MAGE: Human-Like Macro Placement via Agentic Multimodal Reasoningcited by 1
  2. 2026AgenticECO: An Agentic Framework for ECO on 3D Integrated Circuitscited by 1
  3. 2026GoalEvolve: From Handcrafted Algorithm Priors to Goal-Driven Evolution of Physical Design Algorithmscited by 1

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Can AI Agents Really Complete RTL-to-GDS? Lessons from Benchmarking Tool-Interactive EDA Workflows
  2. 2026Building Effective AI Coding Agents for the Terminal: Scaffolding, Harness, Context Engineering, and Lessons Learned
  3. 2025AutoEDA: Enabling EDA Flow Automation through Microservice-Based LLM Agents
  4. 2025JARVIS: A Multi-Agent Code Assistant for High-Quality EDA Script Generation
  5. 2024ORAssistant: A Custom RAG-based Conversational Assistant for OpenROAD
  6. 2026ZhuLong: Execution-Grounded LLM Agent for EDA Scripting with Offline API Self-Exploration
  7. 2025Lita: Light Agent Uncovers the Agentic Coding Capabilities of LLMs
  8. 2026On Accelerating Grounded Code Development for Research