GenAI Chip Hackathon

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 Event Overview

The ICLAD-DAC 2025 Hackathon is a competitive research, and educational event where participants will use language models to solve specified chip design problems across the RTL to GDSII flow (e.g. RTL debugging and physical design). The hackathon aims to evaluate how effectively language models can assist in real-world chip design challenges by assigning tasks of varying difficulty for completion.

One track called the open challenge will compete on solving the problems with GenAI models including large language models (LLM) on the cloud, and the other track called the SLM challenge will compete on solving the problems with GenAI small language models (SLM) running on low-cost platforms such as laptops. Separate winners will be selected in each track.

Event Details

This will be a one-day event co-located with DAC on the Sunday of DAC, on June 22nd, 2025. Participants must register for the hackathon using the link at the bottom of this page. Participants must also register for DAC or “I LUV DAC” to get access to the ICLAD hackathon venue.

Problem Structure

The hackathon consists of 30 problems of varying degrees of difficulty and across the RTL to GDSII spectrum.  Each problem is weighted based on the expected difficulty for both language models and human designers. Participants can use language models in any manner they choose, by prompting it to directly solve the entire problem, get a partial solution, or iterating via prompts and human intervention to get the solution. 

Infrastructure and resources

   a. For the SLM challenge, each team will be provided a Qualcomm X-Elite AI laptop with pre-loaded open SLMs and EDA tools for hardware tasks. Prior to DAC, participants will be offered a tutorial on use of SLMs and EDA tools on the Qualcomm laptop. Participants can also train and use any other SLMs on their laptop. 

    b. For the open challenge, participants will  also have access to LLMs from cloud service providers, from their personal laptops, or the Qualcomm provided laptops. 

Evaluation

Evaluation will be on the provided solution and metrics defined in the problem statement, and chat history will be collected subject to your consent (see consent section in registration page).

Prizes
Teams in each category (SLM and open challenge) will receive prizes. SLM teams compete with SLM teams, and open-challenge teams will only compete with open-challenge teams. Note that while everyone is welcome to participate, including industry participants, prizes will be awarded to student teams only.Each category will recognize three winning teams:

• Gold Prize: $1500
• Silver Prize: $1000
• Bronze Prize: $500

Event Registration (Registration is free, but all participants must register)
DAC Language Model Hackathon Event Registration