Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards

NP-Hard is NP-hard... "heuristics" in this case is just a euphemism for a fantasy cost-function to scam shareholders.

It is a named problem, and can't be misappropriated like the $9Tn worth of FOSS code "AI" scraped and compacted for isomorphic plagiarism tokens. =3

Let me know when I can build my own Cerebras chips, because we're never going to see them as consumers, otherwise.

Yes yes, I know, leagues apart. Still though... One can dream.

My experience with hardware engineers, at least IRL, is very different. They love to talk about their work. However, I used to be an EE so that probably helps.

As for Reddit, there's a lot of "bury head in sand and problem will go away" behavior when it comes to AI. People are understandably worried about their jobs, but they're certainly not doing themselves any favors by downplaying AI or looking for "tech niches where AI isn't yet."

Copperhead is very interesting. I do some embedded systems consulting on the side, but I've never enjoyed PCB layout very much. I briefly investigated using AI for it the last time I had to do a board, but it wasn't very helpful.

[dead]

Well, no, it's not.

If anything, it's closer to the bin packing problem. The cost function isn't expressed in terms of lowest cost between nodes, but instead fitting all of the traces with the lowest board layer count while still meeting stuff like EMI crosstalk guidelines. Then there'll be some traces that are very constrained (think DRAM or SERDES links) that have to be length matched, but those are pretty much invariably point to point links that already are heavily automated.

Traces being, say 20% longer than they need to be for an optimal solution doesn't really change the performance of the board in the vast majority of cases since they'll be some of the lowest resistance components of the netlist anyway, as well as the fact that the PCB is normally oversized for the number of traces needed as it fulfills structural/mechanical needs as well as the netlist needs.

And on top of that, because the optimal solution probably is NP-hard, once again, the industry doesn't look for optimal, only good enough. If layout techs in Altium were regularly solving NP-hard problems, computer science would be a different place. The only goal I see is to meet that bar without hiring layout techs.