In 2020, researchers fine-tuned a GPT-2 model to design fragments of logic circuits; in 2023, researchers used GPT-4 to help design an 8-bit processor with a novel instruction set; by 2024, a variety of LLMs could design and test chips with basic functionality, like dice rolls (though often these were flawed). Now Verkor.io, an AI chip design startup, claims a bigger milestone: a RISC-V CPU core designed entirely by an agentic AI system. The CPU, dubbed VerCore, has a clock speed of 1.5 gigahertz and performance similar to a 2011-era laptop CPU. Suresh Krishna, cofounder at Verkor.io, says the team’s key claim is that this approach is more effective than using only specialized AI systems for specialized tasks within the overall design process.

“ What we learned is that the better approach is to let the AI agent solve the whole problem,” he says. Bringing Human Workflows to Agentic AI Verkor.io’s agentic system is called Design Conductor, and it’s not itself an AI model. It’s a harness for large language models (LLMs). A harness is software that forces an AI agent to proceed through structured steps. In this case, the steps are like those a team of human chip architects would…