AMD Ross
AMD's agentic assistant that connects any MCP-compatible client to Vivado through open MCP servers and ships expert-authored agent skills for Vivado and Vitis HLS workflows, backed by a local documentation knowledge base.
What it does and how it connects
AMD Ross is an agentic AI assistant for AMD Embedded tools that works through natural-language interaction in the user's own IDE or CLI and with their preferred LLM. It searches trusted AMD knowledge, interacts with supported embedded tools and executes proven workflows to help developers design, debug and optimize systems toward quality-of-results targets.
It combines four components: MCP servers that connect Ross to supported AMD Embedded tools, an AMD knowledge base searched with retrieval-augmented generation with cloud or local access, expert-authored agent skills that encode step-by-step design, optimization and debugging workflows, and ready-to-run tested design examples. The skills live in the public Xilinx/ross-ai-assistant repository, which is MIT licensed, and cover Vivado, Vitis HLS, Vitis, hardware debug and Vitis AI.
Supported versions are Vivado all versions and Vitis HLS 2025.2 and later, and the FAQ states no additional license is required beyond the licenses for the AMD tools used. The MCP servers are downloaded after signing in with AMD credentials, and Ross follows a monthly release cadence independent of Vivado and Vitis releases.
Stats are for the public skills repo Xilinx/ross-ai-assistant, not for Ross itself.
What engineers report
On Linux, running vivado-mcp-server with --stdio-bridge leaks a <defunct> (Zs) zombie child process and an anon_inode:[pidfd] file descriptor every ~5 minutes and 30 seconds whenever no Vivado sessions are active.
2026-10-31Read the original
Alternatives
Compare side by side- booley
An open-source agentic RTL IDE with its own typed EDA flows, rather than AMD's assistant for its embedded tools.
- VLSIT_RTL_Generator_AI_Flow
A Claude Code workflow that takes a spec to RTL with human sign-off gates, rather than an assistant for Vivado and Vitis HLS.
- eda-agent
An MCP bridge that drives EDA tools from an agent, rather than AMD's assistant with its own skills and knowledge base.
- agentic-hil
Hardware-in-the-loop agent testing on real boards, rather than an assistant for AMD embedded design tools.
- Rapidflare suite
Rapidflare's internal eval practice for AI agents in electronics, rather than an assistant for Vivado and Vitis HLS.
Sources
Not verified
- Pricing: no additional license is required beyond the licenses for the AMD tools used, per the FAQ; no price was stated.
- License: Ross itself is a commercial AMD product; the companion skills repository is MIT licensed, which is not a license for Ross.
- No Vivado or Vitis error ids exist in the error map, so no related errors are recorded.
Last verified November 6, 2026. Listings are informational. The evidence score measures public, verifiable evidence and is not an endorsement or a compatibility claim.