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ChatGPT for Hardware Design

docs.flux.ai

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Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#71

Post by gowld »

Czarcasm wrote: post #69
fortyseven wrote: post #13

Why on earth would you call this "copilot" when GitHub has already long established that as a name in this space? :I

Github can't monopolize the word "copilot". It's a basic english word to describe someone that is assisting you to steer a vessel/team/project. It's been around for hundreds of years in naval industry, and in aviation since the dawn of flight.

Oh they can if they get a trademark. It's a navigational term, but not a computing term. Inventing a new meaning for a word standard use of trademark.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#72

Post by gowld »

gojomo wrote: post #45
paulgb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe aviators have been using it longer.

Indeed, but under trademark law, the context-of-use matters, and is what allows generic terms from one domain – like 'copilot', 'apple', 'slack', 'y combinator' – to become defensible trademarks in another commercial-offerings domain. From this landing page's headline & 1st paragraph, I was still thinking they were talking about the broader-market, better-known Github Copilot – also a for-pay LLM-driven coding assist…

If they aren't using ChatGPT in Flux.ai, that's textbook trademark misuse!

Check out my new product -- It's Windows for Raspberry Pi! (Actually a Ubuntu port)

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#73

Post by spaceman_2020 »

masto wrote: post #41

Opened site. Chat popped up in the corner and started making sound effects. Closed site. I guess it doesn't matter if a few people are annoyed, if the end result of these things is a new increase in conversions. But I wish "don't annoy people" was actually in the product requirements.

Ah the trusted HN top comment that’s never about the product but a complaint about a minor marketing annoyance on the website.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#74

Post by gojomo »

gowld wrote: post #72
gojomo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but under trademark law, the context-of-use matters, and is what allows generic terms from one domain – like 'copilot', 'apple', 'slack', 'y combinator' – to become defensible trademarks in another commercial-offerings domain. From this landing page's headline & 1st paragraph, I was still thinking they were talking about the broader-market, better-known Github Copilot – also a for-pay LLM-driven coding assist…

If they aren't using ChatGPT in Flux.ai, that's textbook trademark misuse! Check out my new product -- It's Windows for Raspberry Pi! (Actually a Ubuntu port)

Their page doesn't mention 'ChatGPT' - that analogy was added by the submitter. But, Flux.ai has named their LLM-based coding assistant 'Copilot'.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#75

Post by pulvinar »

gojomo wrote: post #48
celeritascelery wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub doesn’t own the copilot trademark. I would actually like to have these assistants called “copilots” instead of “coding LLM”. Since these are going to be a part of our lives let’s use a useful and memorable name.

Simply via commercial use, Github could choose to assert a common-law trademark on 'Copilot' within their field-of-use. But also, they've registered "Github Copilot" at the USPTO: https://trademarks.justia.com/974/60/github-97460083.html

Presumedly they would likewise register "Flux Copilot"?

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#76

Post by gedy »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
gfodor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably not using GPT-4, the internet is being flooded with takes about GPT-3.5’s quality like this simply because the author doesn’t know there is a meaningful difference with the new model.

If GPT-X would just shut up if it doesn't know something it would already be 10x more useful than it is right now.

Isn't that the core issue? Its model doesn't really "know" what is real or made up.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#77

Post by Applejinx »

arcticbull wrote: post #61
rock_hard wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case it seems to be giving examples of common ICs that are voltage regulators - these answers to high level questions are pretty vague by default. We've had good results by asking follow up questions like "what power supply IC could I use to power a 3.3v microcontroller from a 3.7V nominal LiPo battery over the whole battery voltage range?". I asked that question and I got: LM3940 and AMS1117-3.3 (LDO, high d…

btw I hope my comment didn't come across as too negative, like many folks I'm still trying to frame my own thinking around this kind of tooling. Thanks for the follow-up.

Not at all. I thought it was salient and very much what I wanted to know about. It seems there will be a heck of a lot of comments saying 'this is so awesome!' and this isn't a field where I'm able to look at the answer and immediately see the list of howling errors and hallucinations, so I'm very glad somebody can.

It's all very well expecting the hallucinations, but specificity beats Ludditeism every day. My gut reaction was 'ho boy, I'd better not trust this' but I didn't have the domain knowledge to understand why the GPT advice was dangerous. You did.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#78

Post by stavros »

arcticbull wrote: post #32
greg wrote: post #4

Engineer on the team here. Some of the interesting challenges of doing ChatGPT for circuit design were: 1) How to communicate the circuit connections to ChatGPT in the text prompt. We ended up just using the standard netlist format. Apparently it knows about netlists from its training data. It also knows about datasheets. 2) How to get the needed accuracy and precision for questions like "calculate the resistance nee…

Out of curiosity, I noticed in the video that it recommended for a voltage regulator either an LM7805 or an LM1117 - either a super inefficient 5V regulator that has no business in new designs, or a 1.2V low-dropout 800mA regulator that is probably not appropriate to the other components it recommended (i.e. an LM7805 -> LM1117 would be 36% efficient at best). It then also recommends a LiPo battery with a nominal 3.7…

Why is the battery alone not appropriate for the ESP8266? It runs just fine off a lithium battery.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#79

Post by arcticbull »

stavros wrote: post #78
arcticbull wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I noticed in the video that it recommended for a voltage regulator either an LM7805 or an LM1117 - either a super inefficient 5V regulator that has no business in new designs, or a 1.2V low-dropout 800mA regulator that is probably not appropriate to the other components it recommended (i.e. an LM7805 -> LM1117 would be 36% efficient at best). It then also recommends a LiPo battery with a nominal 3.7…

Why is the battery alone not appropriate for the ESP8266? It runs just fine off a lithium battery.

Does your module maybe have a built-in VRM? The datasheet said the operating voltage range was 2.5-3.6V. A LiPo battery has a nominal voltage of 3.7V and a fully-charged voltage closer to 4.2V. That's definitely out of spec without a VRM.

Re: ChatGPT for Hardware Design

#80

Post by stavros »

arcticbull wrote: post #79
stavros wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the battery alone not appropriate for the ESP8266? It runs just fine off a lithium battery.

Does your module maybe have a built-in VRM? The datasheet said the operating voltage range was 2.5-3.6V. A LiPo battery has a nominal voltage of 3.7V and a fully-charged voltage closer to 4.2V. That's definitely out of spec without a VRM.

It doesn't, but it's very tolerant of 4.2. I think the most I've run it with was 5V.
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