CHIA Hackathon

Jump in to agentic architecture fast!

We're hosting an agentic-architecture hackathon leading up to the MICRO A3 Workshop! Participants will be awarded free credit for Google Compute Platform, Gemini, and other Google AI platforms to build out their agentic architecture ideas in the CHIA framework. The top three final projects will receive cash prizes ($750, $500, $250)‡—with first place also taking home an NVIDIA RTX 5080 GPU§. The top three will also be invited to give a talk on their work at the A3 workshop at MICRO in Athens, Greece. All participants will be invited to present a poster at the workshop. Thanks to sponsorship from the IEEE Computer Society TCMM, the top 10 ranked teams will each receive travel funding of approximately $1,500* to send a student to present at the workshop.

CHIA × A³ CHIA × A³
Sponsored by Google NVIDIA NVIDIA IEEE Computer Society TCMM IEEE Computer Society TCMM
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Invent and share creative agentic architecture loops!

Google, NVIDIA, and the IEEE Computer Society TCMM are sponsoring a CHIA hackathon at the 2026 MICRO A3 workshop. Participants will use CHIA to build and share the most novel, creative agentic loop(s) to address challenges across HW/SW co-design. Hackathon participants will be provided with free access to the compute platforms needed to run their agentic flows, such as GCP, Gemini, and other Google AI platforms.

Participants will make those loops accessible to the community as composable building blocks integrated into the open-source CHIA framework, with access to direct support from the CHIA developers. Importantly, participants need not start from scratch: there are plenty of CHIA loop examples in the CHIA paper and CHIA open-source documentation (example loop docs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and CHIA makes it easy to reliably design and run large, distributed agentic architecture loops on Google's AI platforms.

What is CHIA?

CHIA is an open framework for rapidly designing and deploying custom AI-driven HW/SW co-design flows at scale, developed by the SLICE lab at UC Berkeley, the same group behind widely-used research platforms such as RISC-V, Chipyard, FireSim, BOOM, and Hammer.

CHIA includes built-in support for many kinds of architecture tools, including Chipyard, ESP, gem5, ChampSim, FireSim, Hammer, Verilator, Spike, CIRCT, and many more. Adding a new tool and demonstrating agentic capabilities within it is also welcome in the hackathon! CHIA also ships with built-in support for Google's Gemini, Antigravity, GCP, AlphaEvolve, and many other AI platforms.

More information is available at chialoops.ai and in the arXiv paper. The CHIA developers will be on-hand throughout the hackathon to help participants with questions, including at weekly office hours.

How the hackathon works

Teams who do not require funding can simply submit at the final submission deadline on Sep 24 (AoE), without any pre-registration.

Participation for those who require compute/LLM funding starts with submitting a (short) proposal. Every team that submits a proposal gets compute credits and can compete — the review decides how much compute you get, not whether you participate. The Aug 25 deadline for long-term funding has passed and those selections were announced on Aug 29. Short-term funding registrations are open until Sep 18, or until capacity is exhausted — register here.

UC Berkeley affiliates are not eligible to participate in the hackathon.

Have questions? Reach the organizers at a3-workshop-hackathon@lists.berkeley.edu.

Aug 25
(AoE) Proposals due
01

Submit a one-page (max) proposal

Tell us what you plan to build: an overview of the task you are addressing (from the problem tracks, or your own), your methodology (loop design), the expected results, and a cost estimate for the cloud compute and API credits you will need (target $100–$1,500). See how to submit a proposal for the full requirements.

This deadline has passed. Proposals for short-term compute funding are still accepted through Sep 18, or until capacity is exhausted — register here. Teams who do not require funding can also submit at the final submission deadline on Sep 24 (AoE), without any pre-registration.

Aug 29 Selections announced
02

Get compute funding — quickly

The long-term funding round is closed and selections were announced on Aug 29.

Proposals that are not selected still receive short-term compute funding — enough credits to run for 3–4 days with costs covered — so every team can build and compete.

Short-term compute funding registrations remain open until Sep 18, or until capacity is exhausted — register here.

Teams who do not require funding need not register at all: they can simply submit at the final submission deadline on Sep 24 (AoE).

Aug 29 – Sep 24 Hackathon
03

Build your agentic loop

From the kick-off, teams use CHIA and their Google credits (or their own compute infrastructure) to build a winning CHIA-based project/loop, with direct support from the CHIA developers.

Teams who receive short-term compute funding get accounts they can run their projects on from Monday, Sep 21 through Wednesday, Sep 23 at 11:59pm PT.

Sep 24
(AoE) Final submissions due
04

Submit your completed project

All participants — long-term and short-term alike — submit to the same deadline at the end of the hackathon: a 4-page paper plus your open-sourced loop and its results. See end-of-hackathon project submission.

Teams who do not require funding can also submit here, without registering beforehand.

Sep 26 Winners announced
05

Win prizes and invitations to present at the workshop!

Submissions are judged by the A3 workshop's program committee. The top three take home cash prizes‡—plus an NVIDIA RTX 5080 GPU§ for first place—and are invited to give talks at the A3 Workshop. All participants are invited to present a poster at the workshop.

The top 10 ranked teams each receive travel funding of approximately $1,500* to send a student to present at the workshop, thanks to the IEEE Computer Society TCMM.

Sep 28
(AoE) MICRO early registration
06

MICRO 2026 Early Registration Deadline

MICRO 2026 early registration closes Sep 28 (AoE) — two days after the hackathon winners are announced. Everyone giving a talk or presenting a poster at the A3 Workshop needs to be registered for MICRO to attend.

Nov 1 Workshop day
07

Present at MICRO

The A3 Workshop will be co-located with MICRO 2026 in Greece on November 1 and will include talks from the hackathon winners and posters from all hackathon participants!

Suggested problem tracks

Participants can select a problem from the following list and propose/build an AI-driven loop to solve it. Submitting your own ideas is also welcome!

How to submit a proposal

A proposal is only required if you need compute/LLM credits to complete your project. Teams who do not require funding can simply submit at the final submission deadline on Sep 24 (AoE), without any proposal or pre-registration.

What to include

A one-page (max) proposal

  • An overview of the task addressed. Choose from the problem tracks above, or propose your own.
  • A methodology covering your loop design and execution plan.
  • The expected results.
  • A cost estimate of the cloud compute and API credits you will need. Proposals should target a running cost between $100 and $1,500.

Submit one proposal per project. Proposals will be evaluated by the A3 workshop's program committee.

Registrations for short-term compute funding are open until Sep 18, or until capacity is exhausted, and require filling out the form below. The Aug 25 deadline for long-term compute funding has passed. Teams who do not require funding can also submit at the final submission deadline on Sep 24 (AoE), without any proposal or pre-registration.

Register for short-term funding →

Have questions? Reach the organizers at a3-workshop-hackathon@lists.berkeley.edu.

End-of-hackathon project submission

Submissions are due Sep 24 (AoE).

All are welcome to submit by the deadline, with no advance registration or proposals necessary. In particular, there is no requirement to have used any funding provided by the hackathon to submit a hackathon submission.

A hackathon submission has two key components:

End-of-hackathon Write-up

A 4-page paper

A short paper describing your loop and what you found. This paper does not preclude future conference or workshop publication.

The paper should be in 2-column ACM/IEEE style, submitted as a PDF. Use of AI-assistance in paper writing is welcomed, but must be acknowledged at the end of the paper. Human authors are responsible for the entire contents, tone, and quality of their paper.

Artifact

Your loop, open-sourced

Release the CHIA loop you built, with the results it produced. Strong loops may be upstreamed into mainline CHIA, so the community can build on them as composable blocks.

We strongly prefer releases published on GitHub, but other services are also welcome. The URL of your release must be provided on the submission form.

Submit your hackathon submission via HotCRP at a3-chia-hackathon-26.hotcrp.com/.

Submit via HotCRP →

Have questions? Reach the organizers at a3-workshop-hackathon@lists.berkeley.edu.

Hackathon Judging Process

Each hackathon submission is reviewed by human experts on the program committee, who use their own evaluation of the author-identified highlights, paper submission, artifact, and their judgment to produce hackathon decisions. To support them, the hackathon (like the regular-track CFP) embraces an AI-Native Review Process, a collaboration between human experts and AI reviewers that provides grounded, thorough, and thoughtful feedback. Each submission is also evaluated by AI agents with different personas, which do not pass judgement on acceptance, rejection, or ranking. These AI-based reviews are supplied to the program committee to inform the experts' own evaluation.

In the first round review process, hackathon submissions will receive one of the following results:

Within the top 3, the final first place, second place, and third place ranking will be revealed live by judges at the A³ Workshop at MICRO 2026.

Resources, prizes & recognition

The hackathon is sponsored by Google, NVIDIA, and the IEEE Computer Society TCMM.

Compute & credits

Google is providing Gemini and Google Cloud (GCP) credits for the hackathon, giving teams the API access and cloud compute they need for their CHIA loops.

Cash prizes & GPU

Google is providing cash prizes for the top three submissions and NVIDIA is providing an RTX 5080 GPU for first place.

  • 1st place: $750‡ + NVIDIA RTX 5080 GPU§
  • 2nd place: $500‡
  • 3rd place: $250‡

Travel funding to MICRO

Thanks to sponsorship from the IEEE Computer Society TCMM, each of the top 10 ranked teams will receive travel funding of approximately $1,500* to send a student to the A3 Workshop — to give a talk (top 3) or present a poster (top 10).

Present at MICRO 2026 in Greece

Participants are invited to MICRO 2026 in Greece, where they will either give a talk or present a poster at the A3 Workshop (Sunday Nov 1).

Winners are announced Sep 26, two days before the MICRO early-registration deadline on Sep 28.

CHIA developer office hours

The CHIA developers hold weekly office hours over Zoom, starting Thursday, Sep 10 and running through the end of the hackathon on Sep 24 (AoE). Drop in with questions about CHIA, designing your loop, or getting your compute credits working — no need to sign up in advance.

Every Wednesday

5:00 – 6:00pm PT

Sep 16 · Sep 23

Every Thursday

10:00 – 11:00am PT

Sep 10 · Sep 17 · Sep 24

Email a3-workshop-hackathon@lists.berkeley.edu to get the Zoom link.

Sponsors

Thanks to Google, NVIDIA, and the IEEE Computer Society TCMM for sponsoring the A3 CHIA hackathon!

Google NVIDIA NVIDIA IEEE Computer Society TCMM IEEE Computer Society TCMM

Questions?

Reach the organizers at a3-workshop-hackathon@lists.berkeley.edu.

Prize and Travel Grant Terms

§ GPU Prize Eligibility: You must be a resident of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec), Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom, The United States of America (excluding Puerto Rico and its other territories and possessions), and eighteen (18) years of age or older to be eligible for the GPU prize. Employees of Sponsor, its affiliates, and their respective contractors, service providers and professional advisors connected with this Contest, as well as members of their immediate families and/or households, are NOT eligible to receive the GPU prize. GPU prize will be given to the highest ranked submission that meets these terms.

‡ Cash Prize Eligibility: Eligibility subject to final verification by sponsor organizations.

* Travel Grant Eligibility: Eligibility subject to final verification by sponsor organizations. Final grant amount and quantity is subject to change based on the final number and quality of submissions.