SoCDev: SoC Design Automation through TCL Code Generation via LLM-Based Agents

The design of System-on-Chip (SoC) is a complex task that requires considerable effort from designers. Recent advancements in Language Model (LLM)-based agents have brought opportunities to tackle this challenge. In this paper, we introduce SocDev, the first SoC design multi-agent system based on LLM, which can automatically generate SoC designs by creating TCL command scripts for the Vivado Design Suite. Additionally, we have developed SoCDevBench, a test bench to evaluate the capability of different models in generating SoC designs. We conducted experiments using four state-of-the-art LLMs with the test bench, assessing the pass rate, FPGA resource utilization, and logs throughout the process. The ablation study also verify the efficiency of each component. Furthermore, we successfully produced four functional SoCs with microprocessor and operating systems, and validated them using FPGAs. This study opens a new avenue for the generation of SoC designs leveraging LLMs.