From Days to Minutes: Accelerating 3D IC Debug with Agentic AI

By Zackary Glazewski

August 26, 2026

Agentic AI is reshaping semiconductor engineering. Much of the industry’s attention has focused on AI’s ability to generate RTL, automate coding tasks, or improve verification coverage. Those are important advances, but they only address part of the engineering workflow. 

For many engineering teams, debugging is one of the most expensive and time-consuming parts of the development process, spanning tasks from coverage closure to functional and formal verification. As design complexity rises, first-silicon success has become increasingly difficult, with reported success rates below 15%. Debugging also accounts for a significant share of verification effort, with past research estimating it at roughly half. There’s little reason to think that burden has decreased heading into the era of 3D IC (three-dimensional integrated circuit) technology. 

As 3D IC incorporate billions of transistors, heterogeneous chiplets, multiple clock domains, complex memory hierarchies, and sophisticated hardware-software interactions, root cause analysis has become one of chip development’s largest productivity bottlenecks. Debugging methodologies must evolve accordingly. 

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