Rapid Silicon Gets Even More Rapid with RapidGPT, a Natural Language AI Assistant for the FPGA Dev

Rapid Silicon is looking to make developers with in hardware description languages (HDL) even more rapid with a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) assisted field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development tool it calls RapidGPT.

"Rapid Silicon's RapidGPT represents a major breakthrough in FPGA design flows," claims Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon, the company's chief technology officer, of its impending launch. "Unlike any other solutions on the market, our AI approach leverages advanced natural language processing, code autocompletion and conversational features, enabling FPGA designers to work more efficiently and effectively than ever before. RapidGPT saves time and resources, mitigates design errors, and produces optimized solutions."

Based on the same core large language model (LLM) technology as OpenAI's popular ChatGPT, RapidGPT uses its capabilities to provide code autocompletion specifically targeted at hardware description language (HDL) development. It offers, the company claims, a twofold boost in designer productivity — primarily by offering a chat interface that can provide suggestions, import entire soft cores, explain the functionality of a given block of code, and even attempt to summarize documentation.

Key to the company's claims is RapidGPT's use of a natural language interface, which allows designers to phrase questions as though they were asking a colleague. Its ability to view existing code, meanwhile, should mean that its responses are fully contextual and suited to the task at hand — though questions remain about the use of generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models for professional programming work, thanks to their tendency to sometimes spit out entire chunks of ingested code verbatim and open users up to possible copyright issues.

"RapidGPT is the ultimate HDL from the future that empowers FPGA designers to unleash their creativity and design high-quality products faster," the company claims. "By reducing the friction in the FPGA design process, RapidGPT allows designers to focus on their expertise and create groundbreaking designs that transform industries."

While Rapid Silicon has released a demo of the tool, it has not yet made it available to the public — stating only that a launch is "upcoming." More information is available on the company website.