BugGen: A Self-Correcting Multi-Agent LLM Pipeline for Realistic RTL Bug Synthesis

Abstract: Hardware complexity continues to strain verification resources, motivating the adoption of ML methods to improve debug efficiency. However, ML-assisted debugging critically depends on diverse and scalable bug datasets, which existing manual or automated bug insertion methods fail to reliably produce. We introduce BugGen, a first of its kind, fully autonomous, multi-agent pipeline leveraging LLMs to systematically generate, insert, and validate realistic functional bugs in RTL. BugGen partitions modules, selects mutation targets via a closed-loop agentic architecture, and employs iterative refinement and rollback mechanisms to ensure syntactic correctness and functional detectability. Evaluated across five OpenTitan IP blocks, BugGen produced 500 unique bugs with 94% functional accuracy and achieved a throughput of 17.7 validated bugs per hour-over five times faster than typical manual expert insertion. Additionally, BugGen identified 104 previously undetected bugs in OpenTitan regressions, highlighting its utility in exposing verification coverage gaps. Compared against Certitude, BugGen demonstrated over twice the syntactic accuracy, deeper exposure of testbench blind spots, and more functionally meaningful and complex bug scenarios. Furthermore, when these BugGen-generated datasets were employed to train ML-based failure triage models, we achieved high classification accuracy (88.1%-93.2%) across different IP blocks, confirming the practical utility and realism of generated bugs. BugGen thus provides a scalable solution for generating high-quality bug datasets, significantly enhancing verification efficiency and ML-assisted debugging.