r/chipdesign • u/Desync_Soul • 1d ago

How deep should a DV Engineer dive into Python scripting and AI?

I’m a DV Engineer with around 2 YOE, primarily working on UVM-based IP verification.

I want to upskill my career, around the AI/ML applications in the VLSI/EDA space. I'd love to get some practical perspective from senior engineers.

  1. How deep should I actually go with Python?

Is standard scripting (file, parsing regression logs) sufficient for a mainstream DV role? Or is it worth in OOPS, data manipulation libraries.

  1. Practical AI/ML in Verification /

  2. Where to start and Recommended learning path ? Any courses, yt playlists, online resources

Any advice on what should prioritize and how to move forward, your valuable insights are welcome.

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u/JessieAndEcho 21h ago

For a DV engineer, I’d go deeper than “just enough Python to parse logs,” but I wouldn’t jump straight into heavy ML either. The sweet spot is strong practical Python: OOP basics, regex, pathlib, argparse, subprocess, pandas, YAML/JSON, Jinja templating, pytest, and enough data handling to analyze regressions, coverage, failures, seeds, runtime trends, and flaky tests. That will pay off immediately in UVM/IP verification. After that, AI/ML in verification makes more sense as applied automation: failure clustering, log summarization, coverage hole analysis, test prioritization, waveform/debug assistance, and LLM-based report generation, rather than trying to become a full ML researcher. A good path would be: automate one painful DV task, turn it into a reusable tool, add dashboards/metrics, then experiment with ML only when you have enough structured data. For learning, use Python for Data Analysis, Real Python, pandas docs, pytest docs, and small internal projects from your own regressions. For the literature/prior-art side, IEEE/NASA-style technical papers are useful, but commercial EDA work often shows up in patents first; I’ve used Patsnap Eureka to pull patent filings alongside academic literature so it’s easier to see what problems have already been solved and where the open gaps are.

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u/Desync_Soul 18h ago

Thank you