AI was everywhere at DAC 2026, so I stopped by the booth of Rise Design Automation to chat with Ellie Burns to hear what’s new this year. Ellie shared that Rise DA has added a new AI-powered flow to go from specification to a High Level Synthesis (HLS) model, to a RTL model. The reason for using a HLS model is to gain much more simulation… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
ChipAgents Leads the AI Revolution at DAC 2026
I believe this year’s DAC will be viewed as the time and place where EDA experienced a major shift. That is, the shift from the value of tools and methodology to the value of agentic design flows powered by highly trained agents. The design community will clearly need the tools and methodologies that have occupied DAC for years. But… Read More
Bronco AI Webinar: Full-Chip SoC Debug in 15 Minutes
A single bug on a full-chip SoC can pull engineers off roadmap work for days or even weeks. It involves massive waveforms, thousands of files of RTL and UVM, and dense specs that aren’t always perfect. Finding these bugs have always been a matter of engineer-hours and how well knowledge diffuses through the organization.
Bronco … Read More
Using Claude AI for Chip Design
After speaking with dozens of semiconductor professionals at the Design Automation Conference in Long Beach about AI in the chip-design workflow, Claude emerged as the common denominator in every conversation. We’re still at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using AI in the design flow. If management is pushing your team … Read More
Boost Front-End SoC Design With Defacto’s AI-Powered Tool
Front-end SoC design has always been a balancing act between speed, accuracy, and the large amount of manual work required to get RTL, IPs, and collaterals to be aligned. In a recent webinar, Defacto CEO and founder Chouki Aktouf joined by product manager Valentin Boyer, walked through how the company is bringing AI directly into… Read More
Siemens and NVIDIA tout Agentic AI
Siemens has EDA tools and flows, NVIDIA has AI infrastructure, so what happens when these two companies collaborate? I’m at DAC 2026 and all the buzz this year is Agentic AI, so an came out on Sunday evening about how semiconductor and PCB design flows are being improved by this teamwork. Amit Gupta from Siemens and Timothy Costa from… Read More
Agentrys Launches Agentic Design Automation at DAC 2026
There were many new agentic design flows introduced at DAC this year. Some from mainstream providers and others from new startups. The increased level of activity around this technology was good to see. Most of the approaches presented at the conference were targeting specific parts of the flow. Verification and debug were popular… Read More
NVIDIA Brings Agentic AI Toolkit to EDA
NVIDIA’s expansion of the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit with PhysicsNeMo and CUDA-X libraries marks a shift from general-purpose AI assistants toward autonomous engineering systems. Instead of limiting agents to document retrieval, code generation, or workflow automation, the expanded toolkit lets developers connect reasoning… Read More
Synopsys and Intel Foundry Enable System-Level Design on Intel 14A
Synopsys and Intel Foundry are expanding their collaboration to accelerate customer adoption of Intel 14A, connecting advanced process technology with production-ready electronic design automation, silicon intellectual property, multiphysics analysis, and multi-die integration. Announced at the 2026 DAC Chips to … Read More
DAC 2026: How Undo Makes AI for Chip Design Work Better
DAC was abuzz this year with new AI-fueled approaches to chip design and debug. New tools powered by deeply trained models opened substantial possibilities to deliver higher quality designs much faster, potentially with less resources. Every new technology has its risks. For AI-driven chip design some of those risks center … Read More


ASML’s Path to Lithography Dominance—and the Coming Maskless Revolution