Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Large Language Models
Hardware Design
Intermediate Representations
Verification Requirements
End-to-End Multi-Agent Workflow
LLM-based Hardware Development with Hierarchical IRs and End-to-End Multi-Agent Workflow
🤖 AI Summary
本文提出了一种基于大型语言模型的硬件开发框架，通过层次化的中间表示和多智能体工作流解决复杂硬件设计问题。
📝 Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in software development, but their use in complex hardware design remains limited. This gap stems from both the scarcity of public hardware training data and the fundamentally different methodologies used in hardware design. In particular, applying LLMs to hardware requires more than direct RTL generation: the model must understand module boundaries, inter-module connections, and verification requirements. In this paper, we present an LLM-based hardware development framework with hierarchical intermediate representations (IRs) and an end-to-end multi-agent workflow. The core idea is to provide an abstraction of hardware design to LLMs through two structured IRs: Architectural Sketch, which captures module topology and interconnection, and Operational Specification, which defines per-module functionality and interfaces. Our framework uses these IRs to decompose a complex design into sub-modules, specify the per-block functionality, and derive how each module should be tested and verified. We incorporate a multi-agent debug loop in the framework, allowing agents to get the error feedback and control the debug details such as the signals to be probed for simulation. We evaluate our framework on Verilog-Eval benchmark, achieving a pass@5 rate of 95.5%, which surpasses current state-of-the-art LLM generation frameworks. To better assess performance on complex, realistic designs, we introduce a new case study spanning applications from general-purpose processors to digital signal processing systems. Experimental results indicate that such complex designs exceed the capabilities of existing approaches, whereas our framework is the only one capable of producing functional end-to-end design. Our generated RTL follows all industry-standard design rules, is lint-clean, functionally correct and fully synthesizable.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Hierarchical Intermediate Representations
End-to-End Multi-Agent Workflow
Architectural Sketch
Operational Specification
Multi-Agent Debug Loop
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