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Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success in generative
tasks, including register-transfer level (RTL) hardware synthesis. However,
their tendency to memorize training data poses critical risks when proprietary
or security-sensitive designs are unintentionally exposed during inference.
While prior work has examined memorization in natural language, RTL introduces
unique challenges: In RTL, structurally different implementations (e.g.,
behavioral vs. gate-level descriptions) can realize the same hardware, leading
to intellectual property (IP) leakage (full or partial) even without verbatim
overlap. Conversely, even small syntactic variations (e.g., operator precedence
or blocking vs. non-blocking assignments) can drastically alter circuit
behavior, making correctness preservation especially challenging. In this work,
we systematically study memorization in RTL code generation and propose
CircuitGuard, a defense strategy that balances leakage reduction with
correctness preservation. CircuitGuard (1) introduces a novel RTL-aware
similarity metric that captures both structural and functional equivalence
beyond surface-level overlap, and (2) develops an activation-level steering
method that identifies and attenuates transformer components most responsible
for memorization. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates that CircuitGuard
identifies (and isolates) 275 memorization-critical features across layers
18-28 of Llama 3.1-8B model, achieving up to 80% reduction in semantic
similarity to proprietary patterns while maintaining generation quality.
CircuitGuard further shows 78-85% cross-domain transfer effectiveness, enabling
robust memorization mitigation across circuit categories without retraining.