Professor Jason Cong delivered a keynote speech “Chip Design Creation in the Agentic Era” on July 31 at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on LLM-Aided Design (ICLAD).
In his keynote, Professor Cong examined how large language models and agentic AI are changing chip design, highlighting both the capabilities and limitations of AI-driven approaches. He discussed the continued importance of high-level synthesis (HLS), customized tools and smaller models, and the role of human expertise in developing efficient and high-performance chip designs.
ICLAD, in its third year, focuses on how to use LLM (Large Language Model) technology to help design circuits, software, and computing systems with improved quality, productivity, robustness, and cost. It is the first international conference dedicated to this topic, aiming to showcase results that leverage generative-AI advances and provide new methods and solutions for design automation, software development, and other fields. The conference hosts leading researchers, presents open-source LLM models, datasets, and tool flows, and offers benchmarking, testing, and validation methods.
Professor Cong’s keynote presentation is available here.