At DVCon India 2026, Anupam Bakshi, CEO of Agnisys, shared observations on the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in electronic design automation during a brief interaction with me. Agnisys has exhibited at the event and presenting its latest solutions for accelerating semiconductor development from specification to sign-off.
Anupam, who had recently attended DAC in Long Beach and was continuing a world tour that would next take him to Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, described the current environment as an “AI tsunami.” He stated that a disruption is underway and that companies must either ride the wave or be drowned by it. He emphasized the need to stay on top of the changes rather than be overwhelmed by them.
He noted that Agnisys had been working on machine learning well before the current AI hype. The company’s long-standing focus has been on specification, a priority reflected in its identity and earlier website ispec.ai. Agnisys has pursued this direction for 16 or 17 years. Bakshi expressed satisfaction that the broader industry is now recognizing the central importance of specification. In his view, the golden specification sits at the heart of the process, with design, integration, verification, and validation activities organized around it.
Anupam introduced iDesignSpec.ai (presented by the company as IDS-AI) as the firm’s new innovation being promoted globally. The solution received a soft launch; its underlying technology and point-tool components had been under development for many years. He cautioned that AI will not replace everything. Specialized point tools remain essential. These include converting register specifications into code, integrating an entire SoC from connectivity specifications, and generating device-driver code from sequence specifications. The foundational layer of these tools continues to be highly relevant.
The company showcased at DVCon India how its solutions deliver streamlined workflows, intelligent automation, and AI-driven capabilities that speed development from specification to sign-off. Live demonstrations of IDS-AI and IDS-NoC are available, and meetings with company experts can be scheduled on site.
IDS-AI is described as the industry’s first agentic AI framework purpose-built for semiconductor development. It combines advanced AI reasoning with Agnisys’ correct-by-construction methodology. The framework addresses key stages of the IP-to-SoC flow, including early specification checking and verification to identify contradictions and gaps, automatic generation of SVA assertions, automatic generation of UVM test sequences, and support for IP and SoC sign-off.
IDS-NoC targets a major bottleneck in modern SoC design: creating scalable interconnect fabrics for AI accelerators, automotive systems, and multi-core processors. The solution automatically generates a complete, deadlock-free Network-on-Chip fabric with high scalability. The resulting RTL is delivered as open, plain-text SystemVerilog, giving engineering teams full visibility and control. Benefits include reduced integration effort and faster time-to-market compared with traditional crossbar approaches.
Agnisys also participated in the tutorial “CDC-RDC Verification Standard 1.0 for Interoperable Abstract Model,” at DVCon India 2026. The session examines the standard and its contribution to interoperable abstract models for design and verification.
Anupam Bakshi has more than three decades of experience in the EDA and semiconductor industry and has led Agnisys for fifteen years. His earlier career included positions at Gateway Design Automation, Cadence, PictureTel, and Avid Technology. He is a member of Accellera and the Clock-Domain-Crossing working group. Agnisys positions itself as the pioneer and industry leader in Golden Executable Specification Solutions, supplying standards-compliant specification automation to companies in demanding AI, SoC, and IP markets.
The combination of Anupam’s comments and the company’s on-site demonstrations underscored Agnisys’ message that effective AI adoption in EDA rests on a strong foundation of specification-centric tools and automation.
Here is the short video of my interaction with Anupam.
