mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

LLM for EDA in Front-End Design: Challenges and Opportunities

arXiv 2607.09616 ↗First posted 10 Jul 2026cs.ET cs.AR cs.LGcited by 0

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

Abstract (arXiv)

As chip complexity increases and time-to-market pressures grow, front-end design has become a critical bottleneck in chip development. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown great potential in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). Beyond specification understanding, LLMs show the potential to serve as a unified intelligent interface for hardware description language (HDL) generation, testbench construction, and design space exploration. The rise of agentic AI, represented by pioneering systems such as OpenClaw, offers a strategic roadmap for the next generation EDA. From this perspective, this paper discusses the evolution of EDA from localized assistance to autonomous agentic execution. Then, we review representative advances of LLMs in front-end design, focusing on key tasks such as circuit and testbench generation from a shared specification, as well as design quality improvement in established workflows such as high-level synthesis. Finally, we discuss the key challenges and limitations of integrating LLMs into EDA, and outline future opportunities for advancing LLM-enabled front-end design, offering a systematic perspective for researchers interested in leveraging agentic AI technologies for EDA.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 16 of its 28 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Jul 2026.

Builds on

16 of 28 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023ChatEDA: A Large Language Model Powered Autonomous Agent for EDA20 Aug

Other references · 15

  1. 2023VerilogEval: Evaluating Large Language Models for Verilog Code Generationcited by 246
  2. 2023ChipNeMo: Domain-Adapted LLMs for Chip Designcited by 168
  3. 2024AutoBench: Automatic Testbench Generation and Evaluation Using LLMs for HDL Designcited by 38
  4. 2024AssertLLM: Generating Hardware Verification Assertions from Design Specifications via Multi-LLMscited by 30
  5. 2024MEIC: Re-thinking RTL Debug Automation using LLMscited by 25
  6. 2024CorrectBench: Automatic Testbench Generation with Functional Self-Correction using LLMs for HDL Designcited by 23
  7. 2023LLM4DV: Using Large Language Models for Hardware Test Stimuli Generationcited by 21
  8. 2024Automated C/C++ Program Repair for High-Level Synthesis via Large Language Modelscited by 18
  9. 2024LLM-Aided Efficient Hardware Design Automationcited by 11
  10. 2025Exploring Code Language Models for Automated HLS-based Hardware Generation: Benchmark, Infrastructure and Analysiscited by 10
  11. 2024SpecLLM: Exploring Generation and Review of VLSI Design Specification with Large Language Modelcited by 9
  12. 2025Revolution or Hype? Seeking the Limits of Large Models in Hardware Designcited by 9
3 more
  1. 2023Logic Design of Neural Networks for High-Throughput and Low-Power Applicationscited by 4
  2. 2025VFocus: Better Verilog Generation from Large Language Model via Focused Reasoningcited by 4
  3. 2025CorrectHDL: Agentic HDL Design with LLMs Leveraging High-Level Synthesis as Referencecited by 3

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  1. 2025Large Language Models (LLMs) for Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
  2. 2025AutoEDA: Enabling EDA Flow Automation through Microservice-Based LLM Agents
  3. 2025Divergent Thoughts toward One Goal: LLM-based Multi-Agent Collaboration System for Electronic Design Automation
  4. 2026Agentic Electronic Design Automation: A Handoff Perspective
  5. 2026CircuitLM: A Multi-Agent LLM-Aided Design Framework for Generating Circuit Schematics from Natural Language Prompts
  6. 2026Back to the Future: Rethinking EDA Infrastructure for Agentic Systems in Chip Design Verification
  7. 2025JARVIS: A Multi-Agent Code Assistant for High-Quality EDA Script Generation
  8. 2026LEGO: An LLM Skill-Based Front-End Design Generation Platform