Design Conductor: An agent autonomously builds a 1.5 GHz Linux-capable RISC-V CPU

TL;DR

Design Conductor is an autonomous agent that uses frontier models to fully design, verify, and produce a 1.5 GHz Linux-capable RISC-V CPU from specifications within 12 hours, demonstrating a new level of automation in chip design.

Contribution

This work introduces the first autonomous agent capable of building a complete CPU from concept to GDSII, showcasing end-to-end automation in semiconductor design using frontier models.

Findings

Successfully built a 1.48 GHz RISC-V CPU from requirements in 12 hours

Achieved a CoreMark score of 3261, comparable to mid-2011 Intel Celeron

Demonstrated the potential for fully autonomous chip design workflows

Abstract

Design Conductor (DC) is an autonomous agent which applies the capabilities of frontier models to build semiconductors end-to-end -- that is, from concept to verified, tape-out ready GDSII (layout CAD file). In 12 hours and fully autonomously, DC was able to build several micro-architecture variations of a complete RISC-V CPU (which we dub VerCore) that meet timing at 1.48 GHz (rv32i-zmmul; using the ASAP7 PDK), starting from a 219-word requirements document. The VerCore achieves a CoreMark score of 3261. For historical context, this is roughly equivalent to an Intel Celeron SU2300 from mid-2011 (which ran at 1.2 GHz). To our knowledge, this is the first time an autonomous agent has built a complete, working CPU from spec to GDSII. This report is organized as follows. We first review DC's design and its key components. We then describe the methodology that DC followed to build VerCore -- including RTL implementation, testbench implementation, frontend debugging, optimization to achieve timing closure, and interacting with backend tools. We review the key characteristics of the resulting VerCore. Finally, we highlight how frontier models could improve to better enable this application, and our lessons learned as to how chips will be built in the future enabled by the capabilities of systems like DC.