Key Takeaways: Shift left is pushing beyond verification to system-level validation. Fragmented workflows with disconnected tools and models are allowing bugs to escape even though individual components have been verified. AgenticAI may improve coordination across disciplines, identify bottlenecks, and optimizetool usage, but it cannot replace fundamental processes such as simulation and emulation. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss why shift left is pushing beyond verification to system-level validation, and where AI can and cannot help, with Frank Schirrmeister, executive director of strategy programs and system solutions at Synopsys ; Ronen Laviv, vice president of business development and strategic partnerships at Hiveware; Jack Berg, vice president of business development at Silvaco ; Ashish Darbari, founder and CEO of Axiomise . What follows are excerpts of that conversation. To view part one of this discussion, click here . L-R: Silvaco’s Berg; Synopsys’ Schirrmeister; Axiomise’s Darbari; Hiveware’s Laviv. SE: The focus of shift left in design has largely been about verification. But increasingly it’s also about validation, right? Darbari : Yes, and it’s influencing huge decisions that could make small companies go bankrupt if they get it wrong. We’ve seen meetings with architects, designers, UVM leads, emulation leads, FPGA and software leads, and VPs, where they’re all looking at bug escapes and asking, ‘Why did this happen?’ The architect is saying, ‘It’s supposed to be this.’ The designer is saying, ‘We didn’t know that.’ The software team says, ‘It’s supposed to be this.’ And we’re sitting there as formal verification people thinking about communication and the model not being accurate, and I don’t know how well we’ll be able to solve this unless we bring the software into the development cycle. Schirrmeister : It’s not only software. It’s all the other aspects, like multi-physics. EM, thermal, and mechanical, which all have to be integrated. To look at this differently, there are hurdles that I cannot fix in this project. But perhaps I can fix it in the next one. It’s a labyrinth. We have models that are digital twins that are irrefutable, because we’ve measured them against the real thing. We can’t overcome those. We are dependent on the application. It may be more vertical, it may be more horizontally stacked to fit into a certain form factor, like a phone or a data center. But it’s like a video game where you have these things popping up. I want to package it this way, but the packaging guy says we can’t do that, at least not today. Maybe a year from now. All of this needs to be taken into consideration as part of your model. Dabari : Absolutely correct. Laviv : Shrinking times for packaging or power estimation or simulation, or even emulation — isn’t that something we could look at? We’re shifting left using AI in order to do stuff earlier. Berg : Verification traditionally has been the longest and most expensive part of doing a design, and it would be nice to say we can take everything and shift it all left. There are chunks that are being shifted left and verified, and that’s good. But how to shift everything left is something we’re still learning. Darbari : If we pick up historical data from packaging and thermal, why can’t we start building models to say, ‘This happened last time. This time it could be done better.’ Berg : You can do that based on inference. Darbari : But we don’t have a tool that ties everything together in one frame. ‘This is the model of functional safety, security, power, packaging, thermals. Go build it.’ Berg : We have different aspects of that, and we, as an industry, are working slowly but surely to integrate all of those. But we don’t have a single workflow that does that. And it really is a workflow, not just a single tool. Laviv : Nowadays, with AI knowing everything with its skills and touching everything, there is kind of a common database for verification and emula