Cadence announced a massive technology milestone at Computex 2026. The company introduced the industry’s first fully autonomous virtual engineer for semiconductor development. This launch extends the ChipStack AI Super Agent framework to Level-5 autonomy. The system runs on Cadence electronic design automation software and NVIDIA Nemotron models. Additionally, the NVIDIA OpenShell runtime secures the entire operational framework.
The new framework significantly alters traditional hardware verification processes. Engineers can run hundreds of dynamic simulations simultaneously. The architecture integrates directly with Cadence Xcelium Logic Simulation and Jasper Formal Verification. As a result, the tool delivers over 40X faster RTL validation cycles. It successfully shrinks a typical five-week verification loop down to less than one single day.
Paul Cunningham, senior vice president at Cadence, highlighted the rapid shift toward autonomous software execution.
“We see our customers using AI to let their expert engineers take on more ambitious silicon designs with greater speed and confidence. With the ChipStack AI Super Agent, we’re taking the next step, moving from AI that assists engineers to autonomous virtual engineers that can implement real design and verification work, grounded in our signoff-accurate engines and running in secure, governed environments so teams can innovate faster with confidence.”
Governed Autonomy Secures Vital Semiconductor Intellectual Property
This framework autonomously evaluates intermediate engineering results. The software generates RTL, plans verification, and handles complex debugging independently. Furthermore, the system integrates with collaboration environments like Codex or Claude Code. This connection gives human supervisors transparent insight into autonomous decisions.
Timothy Costa, vice president at NVIDIA, explained the balance between speed and system control.
“As semiconductor designs grow more complex, engineering teams need AI agents that can accelerate verification without compromising security, control, or trust. By securing Cadence’s ChipStack AI Super Agent with NVIDIA OpenShell and powering it with Nemotron models, Cadence is bringing governed autonomy to chip design workflows, giving customers a faster, more secure path to develop and validate advanced semiconductors.”
Cadence built this platform following its acquisition of ChipStack in November 2025. The enterprise expanded its portfolio in April 2026 at CadenceLIVE. That expansion introduced ViraStack AI Super Agent and InnoStack AI Super Agent. The company expects to open early-access availability for the Level-5 ChipStack AI Super Agent capabilities in the second half of 2026.
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News Source: Businesswire.com
