Why Agentic AI Could Redefine the Future of Design and Verification
The semiconductor industry is no stranger to transformation. New architectures, new methodologies, and new levels of automation have repeatedly changed what engineering teams can accomplish.
But the shift happening now feels different.
At DVCon Taiwan on September 8, Moses Satyasekaran, Director of Product Management for IC Verification Solutions at Siemens EDA, will explore that shift in his keynote, “Agentic AI and the Rise of the Design & Verification Scientist.” His provocative starting point: “Your next breakthrough engineer won’t come from a recruiter. They’ll come from within.”
The engineering challenge is getting harder
Design complexity continues to increase, while engineering organizations face familiar constraints: schedules are tight, experienced talent is scarce, and achieving first-silicon success remains difficult. As Moses highlights in his keynote, advanced EDA technology, IP reuse, and methodologies such as shift-left have helped narrow the gap between ambition and execution—but they have not eliminated it.
That matters because the next generation of semiconductor innovation cannot depend simply on asking engineers to work faster.
Something more fundamental has to change.
AI is not just another productivity tool
We have seen major technology transitions in EDA before. HDL, for example, dramatically increased what engineering specialists could build.
Agentic AI introduces a different possibility.
As Moses frames it, “The HDL revolution scaled what specialists could build. The AI revolution is redefining who gets to build.”
That distinction is important.
The conversation around AI in engineering has often centered on individual tasks: generating code, finding bugs faster, analyzing results, or helping engineers navigate complex tools. Those capabilities are valuable, but they may only be the beginning.
Agentic AI opens the door to systems that can work across engineering activities, reason about context, explore alternatives, and help coordinate workflows that have traditionally been sequential and siloed. The keynote describes a transition toward a design and verification environment that is increasingly parallel, integrated, and exploratory.
And that could change more than productivity. It could change the engineer’s role itself.
Enter the Design & Verification Scientist
What happens when engineers spend less time operating individual tools and more time defining objectives, exploring possibilities, interpreting results, and directing intelligent systems?
Moses calls the emerging role the Design & Verification Scientist.
It is a shift from being primarily a specialist executor toward becoming an intelligent orchestrator—someone who knows how to bring together engineering expertise, data, tools, and AI to solve increasingly complex problems. The keynote ultimately argues that the future will belong to engineers who learn to conduct, rather than simply use, their tools.
That raises some big questions.
How close are we to this future? What does agentic AI actually look like inside real design and verification workflows? And what should engineering teams be doing now to prepare?
Moses will tackle those questions—and show why this transition may be arriving faster than many expect—at DVCon Taiwan on September 8.
If you are thinking about the future of verification, engineering productivity, or the role AI will play in semiconductor development, this is a keynote you will not want to miss.
