Synopsys, global industry experts in electronic design automation and engineering simulation, has introduced autonomous engineering workflows developed with NVIDIA technology to accelerate chip verification, electronics thermal analysis and multiphysics simulation. Demonstrated for the first time at the 2026 DAC Chips to Systems Conference, the new capabilities are designed to move engineering teams beyond individual AI-assisted tasks by coordinating complete, long-running processes spanning electronic design automation and computer-aided engineering. The new workflows combine Synopsys AgentEngineer technology with NVIDIA Nemotron, NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, CUDA-X libraries and NVIDIA accelerated computing. The NVIDIA OpenShell runtime provides a secure environment for the agentic capabilities, which can interpret an engineering objective, divide it into individual activities and coordinate specialized agents and software tools until the defined workflow is completed.
A primary application is design verification, where engineering teams must confirm that a semiconductor design operates as intended before it proceeds to manufacturing. This process can involve developing test plans, running repeated simulations, identifying failures, determining their root causes and steadily improving functional coverage. Even with existing automation tools, reaching coverage closure can require significant engineering time and computing resources.
Synopsys describes its new design verification capability as a fully autonomous, long-running orchestrator agent. The technology evaluates specifications, design information, test repositories and user inputs before assigning work to specialized agents and verification tools. These resources operate together in a closed-loop process extending from test-plan generation and test execution to coverage closure and advanced debugging.
The Synopsys software interface demonstrates autonomous engineering workflows developed with NVIDIA technology to accelerate chip verification, electronics thermal analysis and multiphysics simulation.
During its DAC demonstration, the autonomous verification workflow reduced what Synopsys characterized as weeks of manual work to hours of agentic execution. The company reported up to 50X faster time to validated register-transfer-level designs compared with traditional verification workflows not powered by AgentEngineer technology. The same demonstration achieved an additional 20% improvement in verification coverage. The benchmark results are specific to the workflow demonstrated by Synopsys and should not be interpreted as guaranteed performance across every semiconductor design. However, they illustrate how autonomous orchestration could reduce the repeated manual effort associated with verification and allow engineers to concentrate on design decisions, unusual failure conditions and higher-level technical analysis.
“AI is fundamentally reshaping engineering, and Synopsys is at the forefront of this transformation, enabling fully autonomous agents across every stage of silicon and systems development,” said Ravi Subramanian, Chief Product Management Officer at Synopsys. “Our close collaboration with NVIDIA continues to accelerate the development of next-generation AI technologies by combining Synopsys’ domain expertise spanning EDA and CAE with NVIDIA’s advanced AI infrastructure and technologies. Together, we are enabling a new class of autonomous engineering workflows that elevate productivity, unlock deeper insights, and help customers innovate faster.”
Synopsys is extending the same approach into analog and mixed-signal development, where design creation, simulation, physical implementation and verification are closely connected. Its AgentEngineer technology can coordinate a multistep analog workflow incorporating Synopsys Custom Compiler Layout Synthesis, which automates layout generation, optimization and convergence between the circuit design and its physical implementation.
Engineers define their design intent and performance objectives in natural language, after which autonomous agents execute and optimize the associated workflow. Synopsys reports productivity improvements of up to 3X for this process, based on gains delivered by Custom Compiler Layout Synthesis. By linking design, SPICE simulation, implementation and verification activities, the approach is intended to reduce the manual handoffs that can slow analog and mixed-signal design closure.
The company has also developed its first fully autonomous computer-aided engineering workflow for electronics thermal analysis. Built with Ansys Icepak electronics cooling simulation software, NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, CUDA-X libraries and open-source PyAEDT libraries, the workflow can autonomously execute simulation setup, preprocessing and post-processing activities.
Thermal analysis is increasingly important as semiconductor devices, electronic assemblies and computing systems deliver greater performance within smaller spaces. Engineers must evaluate how heat is generated, transferred and removed while accounting for device layouts, materials, airflow and cooling-system performance. Automating the preparation and processing of these simulations could help engineering teams examine more design alternatives and identify potential thermal problems earlier in development.
“The future of engineering is agentic, where AI agents reason, plan, execute complex workflows and verify their own work across the entire product development lifecycle,” said Tim Costa, Vice President and General Manager for Computational Engineering at NVIDIA. “Synopsys is using NVIDIA AI tools and accelerated computing to build simulation and AI physics agents that help teams close verification, automate thermal analysis and compress development cycles from weeks to hours.”
Alongside the autonomous workflows, Synopsys has expanded its portfolio to include more than 20 GPU-accelerated EDA and multiphysics products. These products support engineering processes extending from circuit and physical verification to semiconductor materials research, electronics cooling, electromagnetic analysis and photonic system development.
PrimeSim SPICE circuit simulations delivered approximately 18X faster overall wall-clock performance after introducing NVIDIA GPUs, compared with CPU-only workloads. Faster SPICE simulation can help engineers complete repeated circuit analyses and verification runs more efficiently, particularly when evaluating complex analog, mixed-signal and power semiconductor designs. Synopsys QuantumATK delivered acceleration of up to 50X for Gaussian-basis quantum chemistry simulations enabled by NVIDIA cuEST. Synopsys also reported improvements of up to 200X for machine-learned force-field simulations running on NVIDIA Blackwell GPU infrastructure. These capabilities are intended to support research into semiconductor materials and their electrical, chemical and mechanical properties.
For analog and photonic design, Ansys Lumerical FDTD three-dimensional electromagnetic simulation software achieved a 10X speed increase on NVIDIA GPUs compared with CPUs when used within the Synopsys Multiphysics Fusion solution. The software allows engineers to examine how electromagnetic fields interact with devices, structures and materials during electronic and photonic system development.
Synopsys is also using NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries to accelerate engineering solvers, including cuLitho for computational lithography, cuDSS for sparse linear systems and cuEST for electronic structure calculations. Additional applications are being developed using NVIDIA’s newly announced cuISS library. Customers are currently evaluating the Synopsys agentic EDA and CAE capabilities, with availability planned for the second half of 2026. The company’s stated performance figures are based on its demonstrated workflows and specified comparisons, including traditional verification processes without AgentEngineer technology and CPU-only simulation workloads.
About Synopsys
Synopsys provides engineering solutions spanning semiconductor design, intellectual property, simulation, analysis and design services. Its technologies support the development and verification of integrated circuits, electronic systems and AI-powered products across a range of industries. Following its combination with Ansys, the company’s portfolio extends from silicon design and verification into multiphysics simulation and complete system analysis. Synopsys is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol SNPS. For more information, please click here.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA develops accelerated computing technologies for artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, simulation, visualization and engineering applications. Its portfolio includes GPUs, computing platforms, AI models, software libraries and development tools used across data centers, industrial systems, scientific research and product development. For more information, please click here.
(Editor’s Note: All trademarks mentioned in this article, including company names, product names, and logos, are the property of their respective owners. Use of these trademarks is for informational purposes only and does not imply any endorsement.)
Molly Bakewell Chamberlin is the Founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Components Source Network, a 100% woman- and disability-owned B2B publishing and expert marketplace platform serving the global high-tech manufacturing and engineering community. She is the architect, author and developer of the Network’s 11 specialized e-news sites and 11 peer-vetted expert e-marketplaces, including Sensors + Testing Monthly. With more than 25 years of experience in strategic technical marketing, public relations and business development, she is also the Founder and President of Embassy Global, LLC, which has supported more than 200 high-tech industry brands worldwide since 2008. Molly also serves pro bono as Second Vice Chair of the Government Team for the WBENC Forum and is a long-standing advocate for small business, supplier diversity, sustainability and women in STEM. Connect with Molly on LinkedIn.
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