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DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agent

Publication ,  Conference
Chang, CC; Ho, CT; Li, Y; Chen, Y; Ren, H
Published in: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design
March 16, 2025

In advanced technology nodes, the integrated design rule checker (DRC) is often utilized in place and route tools for fast optimization loops for power-performance-area. Implementing integrated DRC checkers to meet the standard of commercial DRC tools demands extensive human expertise to interpret foundry specifications, analyze layouts, and debug code iteratively. However, this labor-intensive process, requiring to be repeated by every update of technology nodes, prolongs the turnaround time of designing circuits. In this paper, we present DRC-Coder, a multi-agent framework with vision capabilities for automated DRC code generation. By incorporating vision language models and large language models (LLM), DRC-Coder can effectively process textual, visual, and layout information to perform rule interpretation and coding by two specialized LLMs. We also design an auto-evaluation function for LLMs to enable DRC code debugging. Experimental results show that targeting on a sub-3nm technology node for a state-of-the-art standard cell layout tool, DRC-Coder achieves perfect F1 score 1.000 in generating DRC codes for meeting the standard of a commercial DRC tool, highly outperforming standard prompting methods (F1=0.631). DRC-Coder generates code for each rule within average four minutes, significantly accelerating technology advancement and reducing engineering costs.

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Published In

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design

DOI

EISSN

2643-1866

ISSN

2164-1498

Publication Date

March 16, 2025

Start / End Page

143 / 151
 

Citation

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Chang, C. C., Ho, C. T., Li, Y., Chen, Y., & Ren, H. (2025). DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agent. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design (pp. 143–151). https://doi.org/10.1145/3698364.3705347
Chang, C. C., C. T. Ho, Y. Li, Y. Chen, and H. Ren. “DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agent.” In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design, 143–51, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1145/3698364.3705347.
Chang CC, Ho CT, Li Y, Chen Y, Ren H. DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agent. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design. 2025. p. 143–51.
Chang, C. C., et al. “DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agent.” Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design, 2025, pp. 143–51. Scopus, doi:10.1145/3698364.3705347.
Chang CC, Ho CT, Li Y, Chen Y, Ren H. DRC-Coder: Automated DRC Checker Code Generation Using LLM Autonomous Agent. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design. 2025. p. 143–151.

Published In

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Physical Design

DOI

EISSN

2643-1866

ISSN

2164-1498

Publication Date

March 16, 2025

Start / End Page

143 / 151