arXiv Machine Learning

Alpha-RTL: Test-Time Training for RTL Hardware Optimization

arXiv:2606. 05253v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have shown increasing promise in generating functionally correct register-transfer-level (RTL) hardware designs.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Agentic ESOpt: Fine-Tuning Long-Horizon LLM Agents with Minimal GPU Requirements

Agentic ESOpt proposes using evolution strategies (ES) instead of reinforcement learning to fine‑tune large language‑model agents for long‑horizon tasks. ES offers model scalability, flexibility, and better long‑horizon credit assignment, enabling full‑parameter optimization with minimal GPU memory. The framework samples parameter perturbations, evaluates agents with rewards, and updates online, achieving notable performance gains on WebArena‑Lite and in test‑time prompt‑parameter co‑evolution.

By Zhi Zheng, Rongsheng Chen, Yunpeng Ba, Zhenkun Wang, Yee Whye Teh, Wee Sun Lee
arXiv AI
Jun 4

StepPRM-RTL: Stepwise Process-Reward Guided LLM Fine-Tuning for Enhanced RTL Synthesis

arXiv:2606. 04246v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Automatic generation of RTL code for digital hardware designs remains challenging due to long-horizon reasoning, multi-step dependencies, and strict correctness constraints in Verilog and VHDL.

By Prashanth Vijayaraghavan, Apoorva Nitsure, Luyao Shi, Ehsan Degan, Vandana Mukherjee
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 21

DORA: A Scalable Asynchronous Reinforcement Learning System for Language Model Training

arXiv:2604. 26256v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a critical paradigm for LLM post-training, yet the rollout phase -- accounting for 50--80% of total step time -- is bottlenecked by skewed generation: long-tailed trajectories indispensable for model performance block the entire training pipeline.

By Tianhao Hu, Xiangcheng Liu, Yuchun Miao, Youshao Xiao, Hongyu Zang, Yang Zheng, Xuan Huang, Jinrui Ding, Yufei Zhang, Yu Yang, Yi-Kai Zhang, Yueqing Sun, Chengcheng Han, Xiandi Ma, Wei Wang, Qi Gu, Yerui Sun, Yuchen Xie, Xunliang Cai
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 16

Where Should RL Post-Training Compute Go? Model Size, Search, Learning, and Feedback

arXiv:2607. 13389v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement Learning (RL) post-training is increasingly used to adapt foundation models for reasoning, planning, and feedback-driven robot-learning pipelines, but constrained post-training resources are often summarized by a single total FLOP budget.

By Patrick Wilhelm, Odej Kao
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 11

Breaking Entropy Bounds: Accelerating RL Training via MTP with Rejection Sampling

arXiv:2606. 12370v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a key component in modern large language models, yet the rollout stage remains the key bottleneck in RL training pipelines.

By Yucheng Li, Huiqiang Jiang, Yang Xu, Jianxin Yang, Yi Zhang, Yizhong Cao, Yuhao Shen, Fan Zhou, Rui Men, Jianwei Zhang, An Yang, Bowen Yu, Bo Zheng, Fei Huang, Junyang Lin, Dayiheng Liu, Jingren Zhou
arXiv AI
Jun 11

When Does Deep RL Beat Calibrated Baselines? A Benchmark Study on Adaptive Resource Control

arXiv:2605. 26418v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: A properly calibrated rule-based autoscaler can beat every one of six mainstream deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms on cost across every workload we test - so when, if ever, does DRL actually help?

By Guilin Zhang, Chuanyi Sun, Kai Zhao, Shahryar Sarkani, John Fossaceca
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 18

CovR: Coverage-Aware Hardware Verification via Reasoning-Guided Reinforcement Learning

CovR is an agentic framework that automates testbench generation for hardware verification by combining self-reflection loops with simulation-based feedback to maximize coverage. It builds a large dataset of 16,514 specification–RTL reasoning tuples and uses reinforcement learning with tool-derived rewards to train a student model, achieving high coverage scores on VerilogEval, RTLLM V2.0, and CVDP. When deployed as a plug-in stimulus engine, CovR boosts coverage by nearly 19% and improves mutation detection while uncovering previously undetected failures.

By Manar Abdelatty, Maryam Nouh, Sherief Reda