Sean M. Lowe
Computer systems engineering
Hometown: Chandler, Arizona, United States
Graduation date: Fall 2024
FURI | Fall 2024
Improving Hardware Verification Coverage using LLMs
Hardware verification is one of the most challenging stages of the hardware design process because of the time and resources involved in ensuring that a hardware design is fully verified and production-ready. With the drastic increase in the strength of code generation from the most recent generation of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-3.5-turbo and ChatGPT-4 from OpenAI, it has been shown that, especially with well-executed fine-tuning, LLMs are powerful tools for overcoming the difficulties of digital hardware design and verification. In traditional design verification, the goal is to maximize code and functional coverage of the design, which is notoriously difficult for verification engineers, and verification teams typically involve three to five engineers per design engineer. Using an automated few-shot interaction between a fine-tuned LLM and a code coverage analyzer, hardware design test benches that exceed code coverage standards can be quickly generated to rapidly improve the design verification process.
Mentor: Aman Arora
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Sponsored project | Fall 2024
Sean Lowe’s FURI project is sponsored by TSMC.
TSMC is a global leader in the semiconductor foundry business. The company’s industry-leading process technologies and portfolio of design enablement solutions help its customers and partners unleash semiconductor innovation. With its recent expansion into Phoenix, TSMC sees the benefit of a strong partnership with ASU faculty and student researchers. TSMC supports the FURI program by providing additional funding for exceptional research projects related to the semiconductor industry. FURI student researchers who pursue a project related to the Semiconductor Manufacturing research theme are eligible for this sponsorship. TSMC-supported FURI students receive a $2,600 stipend and $400 to use for materials. Exceptional research proposals that align with the research theme of Semiconductor Manufacturing will be considered for this additional funding.