TACS-RF: Tool-driven Agentic Circuit Synthesis of RF and mmWave Modules

Forum topic · 小凯 · 2026-10-26

Summary

TACS-RF is a tool-driven agentic circuit synthesis framework in which a large language model coding agent (Claude Opus 4.8) directly drives industry-standard EDA tools—including Cadence Virtuoso/Spectre, Calibre, Cadence EMX, and Ansys HFSS—to design RF and mmWave modules. The authors validate the framework by autonomously designing a 240–251 GHz sub-terahertz transmitter in a 90 nm SiGe BiCMOS process. The agent semi-autonomously designed key sub-blocks, including a 60 GHz push-push Colpitts VCO with second-harmonic extraction, multistage differential cascode power drivers, a push-push frequency doubler, a differential bowtie antenna, and all interstage matching networks. The parasitic-extracted and EM-verified transmitter chain delivers +5.1 to +6.3 dBm output power over an 11 GHz varactor tuning range, with phase noise of -80 to -88 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, consuming 361 mW of DC power. The paper describes the agent-driven design flow and the human-agent division of labor, marking a step toward a "text-to-ASIC" future for RF/mmWave hardware design.

Overview

Field: ML
Authors: Tristan Liang, Aravind Nagulu
Published: 2026-10-27
arXiv: 2610.31882

Abstract

We present the framework of TACS-RF — a Tool-driven Agentic Circuit Synthesis of RF and mmWave modules. In this framework, a large-language-model (LLM) coding agent (Claude Opus 4.8) directly drives industry-standard electronic-design-automation (EDA) tools such as Cadence Virtuoso/Spectre, Calibre, Cadence EMX, and Ansys HFSS to design RF and mmWave modules. We validate the framework through the agentic design of a 240–251 GHz sub-THz transmitter in a 90 nm SiGe BiCMOS process.

The agent semi-autonomously designed the sub-blocks including a 60 GHz push-push Colpitts VCO with second-harmonic extraction, multistage differential cascode power drivers, a push-push frequency doubler, a differential bowtie antenna, and all the interstage matching networks. The transmitter chain with parasitic-extracted devices and EM-verified passives delivers +5.1 to +6.3 dBm output power over an 11 GHz pure-varactor tuning range, with phase noise of -80 to -88 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, while consuming 361 mW of DC power. We describe the agent-driven design flow and the human-agent division of labor, taking a step toward a "text-to-ASIC" future for RF/mmWave hardware design.

Key Results

240–251 GHz sub-THz transmitter designed semi-autonomously by an LLM agent in 90 nm SiGe BiCMOS
Output power: +5.1 to +6.3 dBm
Phase noise: -80 to -88 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset
11 GHz varactor tuning range; 361 mW DC power consumption
Agent drove Cadence Virtuoso/Spectre, Calibre, Cadence EMX, and Ansys HFSS directly