Cadence unveils fully autonomous virtual engineer for chip design
Built on Cadence’s AI-driven electronic design automation (EDA) portfolio with Nvidia Nemotron models, and secured by Nvidia OpenShell runtime, the new agentic capabilities enable customers to run dynamic simulations in automated workflows.
US company Cadence has announced the industry’s “first fully autonomous virtual agentic AI design engineer,” extending the ChipStack AI Super Agent to Level-5 autonomy.
Built on Cadence’s AI-driven electronic design automation (EDA) portfolio with Nvidia Nemotron models, and secured by Nvidia OpenShell runtime, the new agentic capabilities enable customers to run dynamic simulations in automated workflows, Cadence said in a press release.
“We see our customers using AI to let their expert engineers take on more ambitious silicon designs with greater speed and confidence,” said Paul Cunningham, senior vice president and general manager of the System Verification Group at Cadence. “With the ChipStack AI Super Agent, we’re taking the next step—moving from AI that assists engineers to autonomous virtual engineers that can implement real design and verification work, grounded in our signoff-accurate engines and running in secure, governed environments so teams can innovate faster with confidence.”
The ChipStack AI Super Agent now operates at Level-5 autonomy, independently executing complex chip design and verification workflows while allowing engineers to inspect, guide and collaborate as needed. Native integration with collaboration environments and compatibility with tools like Codex or Claude Code, provides transparency into autonomous activity, helping teams stay connected to the system’s progress and decisions, the press release said.
“As semiconductor designs grow more complex, engineering teams need AI agents that can accelerate verification without compromising security, control or trust,” said Timothy Costa, vice president and general manager of computational engineering at Nvidia. “By securing Cadence's ChipStack AI Super Agent with NVIDIA OpenShell and powering it with Nemotron models, Cadence is bringing governed autonomy to chip design workflows — giving customers a faster, more secure path to develop and validate advanced semiconductors.”