digital-chip-design-agents (hdl-tools)VerificationConfidence: Medium

agent wrappers for commercial RTL-to-GDS tools shipped with two command names that were not real binaries (conformal is lec, starrc is StarXtract), a timeout left a pt_shell child holding a licence, and result markers come from documented log formats rather than real logs, with unmeasured parts labeled pending.

Impact Analysis

Persona

Hardware Engineer

Team Size Impact

5x Multiplier

Prototype Delay

3 Days

Est. Annual Cost

$30,000

1 user · 1 month240 min
Rest of team960 min
Rest of year13,200 min

monthly_minutes × 12 × team_multiplier ÷ 60 × $75/hr = $30k/yr

$75/hr assumed rate.

Annual team-minutes decomposed from the reported monthly inputs.

Evidence & Sources

1 Sources

hdl-tools/digital-chip-design-agents PR #142: feat: commercial RTL→GDS scaffolding - PD/signoff wrappers, extraction and IR stages, fair cross-tool comparison

github.com

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Analyst Notes

From the Grok pain-radar digest, Oct 25-26 2026 (Oct 25 daytime to Oct 26 morning slots). Verified live 2026-10-26: issue/PR read on GitHub; title and state confirmed.