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ASIC Manager Agent

The ASIC Manager Agent orchestrates ASIC design work from specification through implementation planning, RTL development, verification coordination, and downstream implementation guidance through a staged, workflow-driven process.

As a manager agent, it owns the overall design flow, decomposition, technical decisions, and progression control while delegating specialist analysis and execution to the appropriate sub-agents when needed.

Key Features

  • Specification-First Orchestration: Structures incomplete or informal requirements before architecture or RTL decisions are made.
  • Delegation to Specialist Agents: Routes specification shaping, visual evidence extraction, and verification work to the responsible sub-agent instead of collapsing everything into a single interaction.
  • Stage-Gated Workflow Control: Proceeds through major ASIC flow stages sequentially and stops for user approval after each major step.
  • Tapeout-Aware Design Guidance: Covers the full path from requirements and RTL to synthesis, floorplanning, place-and-route, and signoff-oriented review.
  • Protocol and Memory Modeling Discipline: Emphasizes cycle-accurate interface behavior, realistic memory macro behavior, and explicit documentation of assumptions.
  • Verification Ownership Boundaries: Keeps verification planning and execution under the verification workflow rather than self-certifying RTL correctness.

How It Works

The ASIC Manager Agent is the top-level workflow manager for ASIC projects. Its job is to take the user from an idea, partial specification, or structured requirement set to a realistic implementation plan while keeping specification intent, implementation choices, and verification evidence clearly separated.

When the input is incomplete or ambiguous, the manager agent first structures the specification. When key technical details are embedded in images, diagrams, timing plots, or datasheet tables, it extracts that evidence before committing to design decisions. When RTL exists or implementation choices need validation, it delegates verification planning and execution rather than treating design reasoning as proof of correctness.

Delegation Model

The ASIC Manager Agent delegates the following work:

  • Specification agent: Converts informal input into structured, testable requirements, assumptions, interfaces, and open questions.
  • Lens agent: Extracts technical evidence from images, datasheet figures, timing diagrams, tables, and other visual material.
  • Verification agent: Builds verification plans, analyzes spec-versus-RTL mismatches, refines testbenches, runs simulations and regressions, and collects coverage. See the Verification domain agent.

The manager agent remains responsible for integrating these outputs into a coherent ASIC workflow and for deciding when the project is ready to advance to the next stage.

Typical ASIC Flow

Use the ASIC Manager Agent when you want NEX to coordinate a staged ASIC workflow such as:

  1. Ingesting and structuring the specification.
  2. Defining the architecture and microarchitecture.
  3. Establishing technology assumptions and initial constraints.
  4. Implementing synthesizable RTL.
  5. Reviewing lint, CDC, and related static design risks.
  6. Delegating functional verification planning and execution.
  7. Driving synthesis and evaluating timing, area, and power tradeoffs.
  8. Guiding floorplanning, place-and-route, and signoff-oriented analysis.
  9. Summarizing final artifacts, risks, and recommended next steps.

This workflow executes sequentially. After each major stage, the manager agent summarizes the work, highlights decisions and assumptions, and waits for explicit approval before continuing.

Behavioral Expectations

The ASIC Manager Agent follows ASIC-specific engineering constraints throughout the workflow:

  • Prioritize timing, power, and area tradeoffs instead of assuming idealized behavior.
  • Treat clocking, reset strategy, CDC, and metastability as first-class concerns.
  • Make protocol timing and memory behavior explicit at cycle level.
  • Distinguish clearly between specification-derived intent, assumptions, RTL choices, and tool-driven implementation outcomes.
  • Avoid bypassing delegated verification execution when the verification workflow is available.

Tooling Guidance

When tool-specific execution is needed, the ASIC Manager Agent prefers industry-standard flows such as Synopsys Design Compiler or Cadence Genus for synthesis, VCS/Xcelium/Questa for simulation, Cadence Innovus or Synopsys ICC2 for place-and-route, and PrimeTime or Calibre for signoff-oriented analysis.

If more than one equivalent tool is available in your environment, the agent asks which flow you want before emitting vendor-specific commands or assumptions.

Usage

Use the ASIC manager agent through the NEX CLI by specifying --agent=asic.

For best results, provide as much of the following as possible when you start:

  • Functional requirements or an existing specification.
  • Interface definitions and protocol expectations.
  • Clock, reset, throughput, latency, and PPA targets.
  • Process-node or technology assumptions.
  • Existing RTL, verification collateral, or implementation reports if they already exist.