Agentic AI and the EDA Revolution: Why Data Mobility, Security, and Availability Matter More Than Ever

The EDA (Electronic Design Automation) and semiconductor industries are experiencing a transformative shift—one that’s being powered by the rise of Agentic AI. If you attended this year’s SNUG, CDNLive, and/or DAC 2025, you couldn’t miss it: agentic AI was the hot topic, dominating keynotes, demos, and booth conversations from start-ups to the “Big 3” (Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens EDA).

But beyond the buzz, there’s a real, urgent need driving this adoption. Chip designs are growing exponentially in complexity, and the pool of skilled engineers isn’t keeping pace. The only way to bridge this productivity gap is with smarter automation—enter agentic AI. But for agentic AI to deliver on its promise, the underlying data infrastructure must be up to the task. That’s where NetApp, with ONTAP and FlexCache, comes in.

What Is Agentic AI?
What is agentic AI In short, it’s the next step in AI evolution—systems that don’t just automate tasks but act as reasoning agents. Agentic AI uses specialized AI Agents to reason and iteratively plan to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems. Agentic AI uses a four-step process for problem-solving: Perceive, Reason, Act, and Learn

Agentic AI: More Than Just Hype

For example, one new EDA startup ChipAgents.ai demonstrated a live demos where agentic AI read a 300-page ARM processor spec and, in real time, generated a detailed test plan and verification suite. As someone who’s been in the trenches of chip verification, I can say: this is not an incremental improvement. This is game-changing productivity.The benefits are clear:

• Automates the most tedious engineering tasks
• Bridges the engineering talent gap
• Enables faster, more reliable chip design cycles

These benefits are only realized if your data is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, and always secure.

Microsoft kicked off DAC with a talk by William Chappel who presented reasoning agents in the EDA design flow and introduced Microsoft’s Discovery platform. Microsoft’s Discovery Platform for Agentic AI is an advanced hybrid cloud-based environment designed to accelerate the development and deployment of agentic AI workflows.  Discovery Platform used NetApp’s ONTAP FlexCache technology to continuously and securely keep on-prem design data in-sync Microsoft’s Azure NetApp Files volume in the cloud.

Why Data Mobility, Security, and Availability Are Critical for Agentic AI

1. Data Mobility: The Heart of Hybrid Cloud AI

Agentic AI requires massive GPU resources—resources that are often impractical to build or scale in existing datacenters due to massive power requirements of H100, H200, or newer GPU systems.  Requirements for high power racks, water cooling, and rack space constraints will make adoption challenging, and we haven’t discussed the change from traditional networking to InfiniBand networking. That’s why most early experimentation and deployment of agentic AI for EDA will happen in the cloud.

But here’s the challenge: EDA workflows generate and process huge volumes of data that need to move seamlessly between on-prem and cloud environments. Bottlenecks or delays can kill productivity and erode the benefits of AI.

NetApp ONTAP and FlexCache are uniquely positioned to solve this. With ONTAP’s unified data management and FlexCache’s ability to cache active datasets wherever the compute is, enabling engineers to get instant and secure access to the data they need, whether they’re running workloads on-prem, in the cloud, or both.

FlexCache in Action:
FlexCache can securely, continuously and instantly keep all design data in-sync both on-prem and cloud.  This can enable real-time data access to Cloud based AI Agents to secure design data from the active design work being run on-prem.  In the ACT stage, AI agents can then automatically run EDA tools either on-prem or in the cloud based on the AI Agent generated PLAN.

2. Data Security: Protecting Your IP in a Distributed World

EDA data is among the most sensitive in the world. Intellectual property, proprietary designs, and verification strategies are the crown jewels of any semiconductor company. Moving this data between environments introduces risk—unless you have robust, enterprise-grade security.

ONTAP’s security features including encryption at rest and in transit to advanced access controls and audit logging—ensure that your data is always protected, no matter where it lives or moves. FlexCache maintains these security policies everywhere you need your data, so you never compromise on protection, even as you accelerate workflows.

3.Data Availability: No Downtime, No Delays

Agentic AI thrives on data availability. If an AI agent can’t access the latest design files or verification results, productivity grinds to a halt. In a world where chip tape-outs are measured in millions of dollars per day, downtime is not an option.

ONTAP’s legendary reliability and FlexCache’s always-in-sync architecture ensure that your data is available whenever and wherever it’s needed. Whether you’re bursting workloads to the cloud or collaborating across continents, your AI agents—and your engineers—can count on NetApp.

NetApp: The Foundation for Agentic AI in EDA

Agentic AI is set to reshape EDA and semiconductor design, closing the productivity gap and enabling new levels of automation and innovation. But none of this is possible without the right data infrastructure.

Let’s face it: most EDA datacenters today aren’t ready to become “AI Factories,” as NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang and industry experts predict will be required. Customers are unlikely to invest in new on-prem infrastructure until agentic AI solutions mature and requirements are clear. That’s why hybrid cloud is the go-to strategy—and why NetApp is uniquely positioned to help.

• ONTAP is the only data management platform integrated across all three major clouds’ EDA reference architectures.
• FlexCache is the most widely adopted hybrid cloud solution for high-performance, always-in-sync data.
• No other vendor offers this level of hybrid cloud readiness, flexibility, and security.

Even if your organization isn’t ready for the cloud today, why invest in legacy storage that can’t support your hybrid future? The next wave of EDA innovation will be powered by agentic AI, and it will demand data mobility, security, and availability at unprecedented scale. NetApp is ready—are you?

Choose NetApp—and be ready for the future of EDA.

Ready to accelerate your agentic AI journey? Learn more about NetApp ONTAP and FlexCache for EDA design workflows at NetApp.com.

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