# Structured Testbench Generation for LLM-Driven HDL Design and Verification-Oriented Data Curation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12983 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12983/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.17192/) (2022)
- [gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10925/) (2025)
- [AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13131/) (2025)
- [VerilogEval: Evaluating Large Language Models for Verilog Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07544/) (2023)
- [Continual Learning of Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16789/) (2024)
- [Revisiting VerilogEval: A Year of Improvements in Large-Language Models for Hardware Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11053/) (2024)
- [QiMeng-CodeV-R1: Reasoning-Enhanced Verilog Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24183/) (2025)
- [CorrectBench: Automatic Testbench Generation with Functional Self-Correction using LLMs for HDL Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08510/) (2024)
- [ScaleRTL: Scaling LLMs with Reasoning Data and Test-Time Compute for Accurate RTL Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05566/) (2025)
- [VFlow: Discovering Optimal Agentic Workflows for Verilog Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03723/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [RTLCurator: Label-Efficient Data Curation for RTL Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29283/) (2026)
- [A Survey on LLM-Integrated Hardware Design Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.10580/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Automated testbench generation has become a critical bottleneck in large language model (LLM)-driven Register Transfer Level (RTL) workflows, where large numbers of candidate designs must be verified rapidly and reliably. Existing prompt-based approaches treat testbench generation as unconstrained code synthesis, yielding stochastic outputs with high token cost, low reproducibility, and insufficient coverage. To address this gap, we present STG, a Structured Testbench Generation framework that exploits the inherent structure of hardware designs to generate deterministic testbenches. As a direct verification tool, STG runs 720x faster than an iterative LLM-based testbench generation flow and higher rate of successful compilation, achieves higher coverage, and reduces false-pass verdicts on incorrect DUTs. STG also helps identify errors in RTL generation benchmarks by exposing faulty benchmark testbenches. As a data curation engine, it is 11x faster than LLM-based filtering on a single CPU core with 127x less energy, and the resulting distilled models provide state-of-the-art performance in our multi-benchmark evaluation. As a test-time scaling oracle, it reduces node count by 14-47%. Our models are available at https://huggingface.co/collections/AS-SiliconMind/siliconmind-v12.
