Siemens unveils agentic AI toolkit for chip verification

Siemens has launched the Questa One Agentic Toolkit, a set of agentic AI workflows for integrated circuit design and verification within its Questa One verification software portfolio.

The product adds autonomous, multi-step workflows that operate within the verification domain and run under customer-defined governance boundaries. It includes configurable human oversight at key decision points and runs within engineers' existing environments.

Verification workloads are rising as chip designs grow more complex. The shift to 3D ICs, chiplet-based architectures and software-defined systems has increased the number of scenarios teams must cover. Siemens is positioning the toolkit as a way to move verification from separate tool interactions to orchestrated workflows.

"Questa One sets a new standard for smart verification and the Questa One Agentic Toolkit builds on those connected and data-driven principles with agentic AI workflows that empower our customers to achieve trusted design and verification closure with AI acceleration - while maintaining the human expertise and judgment that builds quality and trust," said Abhi Kolpekwar, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Verification Technologies, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

The toolkit is designed to work with Siemens' Fuse EDA AI system, described as an agentic and generative framework for electronic design automation. It also uses a framework-agnostic architecture, allowing integration with other agentic platforms.

Integration options

Customers adopting the full Siemens stack get deep integration and optimised performance in the Fuse environment. The agentic workflows connect through standard interfaces that remain consistent across platforms, helping protect existing tool and process investments.

The toolkit centres on model context protocols that expose Siemens verification tools to agentic frameworks. The workflows use NVIDIA Llama Nemotron and NVIDIA NIM, and maintain awareness of verification state and relationships between designs, testbenches, test plans and specifications.

The toolkit is built to work with mainstream AI coding applications, including GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor and Cline, alongside Fuse. Workflows can run through command line interfaces or within integrated development environments such as VS Code.

The agentic workflows sit on top of a connected verification ecosystem and can orchestrate tools across the portfolio, including Questa One, Tessent software for design-for-test, and the Veloce CS hardware-assisted verification and validation system.

Agent lineup

At launch, Siemens is offering several agents aimed at common stages of the verification flow. The RTL Code Agent generates synthesizable register-transfer level code from natural language descriptions, checks for coding violations, and suggests fixes aligned with industry standards.

The Lint Agent configures lint analysis and reads existing RTL to check for design errors and style violations. Engineers review the results and can accept automated fixes or waivers.

The CDC Agent configures and runs clock domain crossing verification. It suggests fine-tuning changes after analysing results and can propose fixes or waivers for engineer review.

The Verification Planning Agent analyses specifications and generates verification plans. Engineers review and approve each step as the system structures sections, creates feature descriptions, and defines scenarios and checking strategies.

The Debug Agent correlates waveforms, assertions, coverage data and logs. It flags suspicious signal transitions, suggests potential failure mechanisms, and generates targeted debug scenarios for engineer review.

The agents work directly with tools including Questa One Verification IQ, Questa One SFV and Questa One Sim. The toolkit also includes curated prompt libraries developed by domain experts.

Partner comments

NVIDIA and several early users of the toolkit emphasised productivity and adoption time in comments alongside the announcement.

"The increasing complexity of modern chip design and verification requires a new generation of intelligent, agentic workflows that can reason through intricate tasks while maintaining the highest levels of precision," said Tim Costa, General Manager of Industrial and Computational Engineering, NVIDIA.

MediaTek said engineers were able to use the toolkit quickly and reported shorter task completion times than with existing approaches.

"The productivity gains delivered by the Questa One Agentic Toolkit were both immediate and significant," said Akshay Aggarwal, Senior Director of Engineering, MediaTek.

Tsavorite Scalable Intelligence highlighted combining formal verification with lint automation in its development flow.

"Combining AI and verification, Questa One enabled our team to quickly adopt full agentic Formal Property Verification, and auto-fix issues with Lint Agent," said Shalesh Thusoo, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tsavorite Scalable Intelligence.

Siemens is making the Questa One Agentic Toolkit available through an early access programme, with a broader rollout planned as customers validate governance controls and integrate the workflows into established verification methodologies.