Bits, Bytes, and Gates
Notes on portable stimulus, hardware modeling, and Python in design verification.
The Right Skills for the Job: Project-Scoped Agent Skills
Agentic AI has quickly become a dominant workflow. Give an LLM access to the filesystem and shell, provide it good instructions, and watch it work! It's that second part that is critical to making the process scalable. LLMs are quite happy to fill in the gaps…
What's My Env Again?
Almost any non-trivial project will require some amount of environment configuration. Perhaps the project uses a local Python virtual environment that must be used for running tests. Perhaps it's a hardware-design project that needs to configure the environmen…
Simplifying Access to Open-Source EDA Software
Free and Open-Source Silicon (FOSSi) hardware designs face an interesting challenge. There's a sizable and growing set of open source tools. But, obtaining the software in pre-built form -- especially the latest versions -- can be a challenge due to the numbe…
Managing DV Project Dependencies - Now with FuseSoc
I had the pleasure of attending [LatchUp](https://fossi-foundation.org/latch-up/2026) this past weekend. Conferences invariably spark new ideas and new perspectives, and this past weekend was no different. Specifically, I found a new perspective on interope…
Better Coverage Analysis with AI
One near-term outcome of AI's [impact on open source EDA](https://bitsbytesgates.com/eda/2026/02/07/OpenSourceEDAinAIEra.html) is that I've been revisiting and enhancing some of my older projects. [PyUCIS](https://fvutils.github.io/pyucis/), a set of tools fo…
Open Source EDA in the AI Era
AI is changing the world in many ways. This is particularly visible in the commercial software-development space, where AI is often credited with [developing significant portions of new code](https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-t…
Getting Started with Executable Specs
Hardware engineers spend their lives working with specifications, both natual language ("paper") and executable. We've been looking at characterizing the interfaces and internal implementation of executable specifications -- models. But, enough theory. Let's …
Relating Hardware Model Abstractions
The most difficult transition in hardware modeling is the transition from natural-language to executable specification. It is during this transition that the ambiguities inherent in natural-language descriptions are resolved. Maximizing value from a multi-abst…
Shifting Left with Hardware Model Abstractions
"Shift-Left" is a strategy to reorganize processes to enable more parallelism by adjusting dependencies. Hardware model abstractions provide a key tool to shifting tasks left in the silicon design process.
The Best of a Language and a Class Library
In hardware design and verification, we're used to working with domain-specific languages (DSLs), such as SystemVerilog, VHDL, and PSS, as well as class libraries, such as UVM, SystemC, and CHISEL. We use these DSLs and class libraries to capture key semantic…