Optimizing Register Transfer Level (RTL) code is a critical step in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) for improving power, performance, and area (PPA). We present CODMAS (Collaborative Optimization via a Dialectic Multi-Agent System), a framework that combines structured dialectic reasoning with domain-aware code generation and deterministic evaluation to automate RTL optimization. At the core of CODMAS are two dialectic agents: the Articulator, inspired by rubber-duck debugging, which articulates stepwise transformation plans and exposes latent assumptions; and the Hypothesis Partner, which predicts outcomes and reconciles deviations between expected and actual behavior to guide targeted refinements. These agents direct a Domain-Specific Coding Agent (DCA) to generate architecture-aware Verilog edits and a Code Evaluation Agent (CEA) to verify syntax, functionality, and PPA metrics. We introduce RTLOPT, a benchmark of 120 Verilog triples (unoptimized, optimized, testbench) for pipelining and clock-gating transformations. Across proprietary and open LLMs, CODMAS achieves ~25% reduction in critical path delay for pipelining and ~22% power reduction for clock gating, while reducing functional and compilation failures compared to strong prompting and agentic baselines. These results demonstrate that structured multi-agent reasoning can significantly enhance automated RTL optimization and scale to more complex designs and broader optimization tasks.

Register-Transfer Level (RTL) synthesis and summarization are central to hardware design automation but remain challenging for Large Language Models (LLMs) due to rigid HDL syntax, limited supervision, and weak alignment with natural language. Existing prompting and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methods have not incorporated symbolic planning, limiting their structural precision. We introduce SYMDIREC, a neuro-symbolic framework that decomposes RTL tasks into symbolic subgoals, retrieves relevant code via a fine-tuned retriever, and assembles verified outputs through LLM reasoning. Supporting both Verilog and VHDL without LLM fine-tuning, SYMDIREC achieves ~20% higher Pass@1 rates for synthesis and 15–20% ROUGE-L improvements for summarization over prompting and RAG baselines, demonstrating the benefits of symbolic guidance in RTL tasks.

Recently, there has been a growing availability of pre-trained text models on various model repositories. These models greatly reduce the cost of training new models from scratch as they can be fine-tuned for specific tasks or trained on large datasets. However, these datasets may not be publicly accessible due to the privacy, security, or intellectual property issues. In this paper, we aim to develop a lightweight student network that can learn from multiple teacher models without accessing their original training data. Hence, we investigate Data-Free Knowledge Amalgamation (DFKA), a knowledge-transfer task that combines insights from multiple pre-trained teacher models and transfers them effectively to a compact student network. To accomplish this, we propose STRATANET, a modeling framework comprising: (a) a steerable data generator that produces text data tailored to each teacher and (b) an amalgamation module that implements a self-regulative strategy using confidence estimates from the teachers’ different layers to selectively integrate their knowledge and train a versatile student. We evaluate our method on three benchmark text classification datasets with varying labels or domains. Empirically, we demonstrate that the student model learned using our STRATANET outperforms several baselines significantly under data-driven and data-free constraints.

Email is a widely used tool for business communication, and email marketing has emerged as a cost-effective strategy for enterprises. While previous studies have examined factors affecting email marketing performance, limited research has focused on understanding email response behavior by considering email content and metadata. This study proposes a Prototype-based Multi-view Network (PROMINET) that incorporates semantic and structural information from email data. By utilizing prototype learning, the PROMINET model generates latent exemplars, enabling interpretable email response prediction. The model maps learned semantic and structural exemplars to observed samples in the training data at different levels of granularity, such as document, sentence, or phrase. The approach is evaluated on two real-world email datasets: the Enron corpus and an in-house Email Marketing corpus. Experimental results demonstrate that the PROMINET model outperforms baseline models, achieving a ~3% improvement in F1 score on both datasets. Additionally, the model provides interpretability through prototypes at different granularity levels while maintaining comparable performance to non-interpretable models. The learned prototypes also show potential for generating suggestions to enhance email text editing and improve the likelihood of effective email responses. This research contributes to enhancing sender-receiver communication and customer engagement in email interactions.