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Can AI design circuit boards yet?

eebench.org

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Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#181

Post by Zambyte »

Zambyte wrote: post #128
mpodeley wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Next-token prediction” describes the output format, not the computation required to choose each token. During training, models develop internal representations of concepts, constraints, possible futures, and algorithms. The PCB agent also writes circuit code, runs simulations, reads failures, and revises the design. It isn’t one-shot autocomplete. Astra and Fable are already hard to square with “mere autocomplete.”…

How can you define "general" and "intelligence" in a way that has existed for years now?

hasn't*

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#182

Post by Neywiny »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #117
Neywiny wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're 60 years old. The amount of training data on them is endless. Books, textbooks, videos, blog posts. The problem is when you want you do something that doesn't have 60 years of freely available documentation of their functions and applications

Like software, there's going to be a lot of pressure to use well documented tools within the model's training set. Innovation on the outputs may increase, but infrastructure and tooling will slow down.

If I'm making a PCB and I see anything older than 20 years, even glue logic, I'm very suspicious. Last time that happened (inherited design) the FETs didn't saturate and the LDO was just a DO... If the tool wants 7400 series logic, I'm not using the tool. None of my work is >= 5v signaling

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#185

Post by cwmoore »

akiselev wrote: post #110
mapontosevenths wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually can route just fine. I used Sol to design and route mine from start to finish. Sent it to PCBWay and had a working prototype in a few weeks. It was a pretty simple rp2040 based thing, similar to Adadfruits USB feather.I just gave it kicad and it wrote python to route it. The board was probably larger than it had to be, and two of the silkscreens were swapped, but it worked on the first go. FWIW - Comput…

I'd love to see that chat log, and the final board. To be fair I've only been testing on nontrivial PCBs with 6+ layers and I haven't had the luck you have. > FWIW - Computer vision is also NP complete, but we do that all the time now. I have no idea what you mean by this. What's your definition of NP complete?

Not OP but “actual exponential complexity” should work, what is really your issue with that comment?

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#186

Post by brandnewideas »

pineaux wrote: post #143
mpodeley wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Next-token prediction” describes the output format, not the computation required to choose each token. During training, models develop internal representations of concepts, constraints, possible futures, and algorithms. The PCB agent also writes circuit code, runs simulations, reads failures, and revises the design. It isn’t one-shot autocomplete. Astra and Fable are already hard to square with “mere autocomplete.”…

Yeah most of us are so fucked. With almost no way of protecting ourselves. No real amount of assets that will give enough power to save ourselves from the people in a position that can maximally leverage AI and lock others out. I see a future where these capabilities will be locked behind super high price pay walls. Why wouldn't they? How recoup investments if the price doesnt go up?

Shattering changes to societal structure are coming.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#187

Post by erhash »

BlackRabbit1 wrote: post #75

We tested pretty much all available "AI" board and schematic auto-layouters in the market. All failed even with the most basic tasks. On the other side the latest frontier models are pretty strong in writing embedded C + Assembler code and debugging it afterwards. It's fun to watch it writing crazy complex 'gdb' plugins in Python. This improved brutally.

things are getting better - but the tooling required to make auto layout work are still hard

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#188

Post by oscillonoscope »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #120
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exciting. How long do you think it's going to be when electrical engineering is mostly going to be about verification of AI designs, and what are the tools out there to enable that?

Electrical engineering will involve humans making specifications for a while the same way we do vibe software engineering today. Board design and layout will change but electrical engineering is about more than that. For tools, I think the LLMs will outpace companies who built specialized tooling for this over the last couple years. Every six months we will see more progress than we saw in the last few years - for qu…

I've been playing in this space as a hobby for a while. I agree the current round of startups are dead ends but I doubt LLMs will be good enough without drastically different tooling than today (ECAD and ATE). I've been playing around on a DSL for schematic capture alongside the design contract and it works for most subcircuits quite naturally. From that you can deterministically create a set of simulations and hardware tests to validate everything.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#189

Post by ultrarunner »

brandnewideas wrote: post #186
pineaux wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah most of us are so fucked. With almost no way of protecting ourselves. No real amount of assets that will give enough power to save ourselves from the people in a position that can maximally leverage AI and lock others out. I see a future where these capabilities will be locked behind super high price pay walls. Why wouldn't they? How recoup investments if the price doesnt go up?

Shattering changes to societal structure are coming.

It's like inflation for quality of life. Right now we're in the stimulus check phase, and people feel great about having been handed some cash. The next step is that cash has been spent, and what's remaining isn't worth anything.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#190

Post by m3kw9 »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #103

I have 15+ years of PCB design experience. Mostly hobby stuff but a fair amount of processional work. Kilowatt range brushless motor controllers, basic RF stuff, lots of microcontroller stuff. I had Fable design an LED earring. Rechargeable coin cell, RP2350 cpu, IMU, 45 addressable LEDs. It made two mistakes - missed the through holes on the coin cell holder footprint and made the center pad too small. I was able to…

same with software, it came fast, but we was ready. The leverge is high but it still does not have much "taste" in design. Ask it to design something, they enter a pattern. They can get it right but is the same pattern, if it's wrong they will repeat it similarly.
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