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Can AI design circuit boards yet?

eebench.org

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Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#81

Post by abletonlive »

kennyadam wrote: post #79
CyLith wrote: post #27

A personal data point: I had Claude Opus 4.8 design a fairly textbook circuit that outputs a monochrome image burned in an EEPROM over standard 640x480 VGA using only 74 series logic and GALs. It designed the circuit and GAL code, and I did the routing, and got it made through JLC for $6. After it came back, there was one error that was not caught, which I could blue-wire, and it works just fine otherwise. I was fair…

Are there any resources anyone could share that explain how LLMs can do things like design functioning circuits from next token prediction? I am totally baffled by how the models can complete so many varied and complex tasks without an actual understanding of what they're doing. I saw a post about models posting on forums, chatting together about how to complete tasks. Behaviour that seems totally, well, human. Yet,…

You fell for the stochastic parrot meme and next token over simplification. That's the explanation.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#82

Post by lukan »

kennyadam wrote: post #79
CyLith wrote: post #27

A personal data point: I had Claude Opus 4.8 design a fairly textbook circuit that outputs a monochrome image burned in an EEPROM over standard 640x480 VGA using only 74 series logic and GALs. It designed the circuit and GAL code, and I did the routing, and got it made through JLC for $6. After it came back, there was one error that was not caught, which I could blue-wire, and it works just fine otherwise. I was fair…

Are there any resources anyone could share that explain how LLMs can do things like design functioning circuits from next token prediction? I am totally baffled by how the models can complete so many varied and complex tasks without an actual understanding of what they're doing. I saw a post about models posting on forums, chatting together about how to complete tasks. Behaviour that seems totally, well, human. Yet,…

"my brain hurts trying to understand how that can be"

Well, we all are, some are just more used to it by now and take the magic for granted.

My simple explanation, those neural networks save lot's of patterns of data, and that pattern can represent an image, a code snippet, a poem, or well ... description of a circuit board. And especially the text variant, LLM's - did copy all from us - so obviously they sound like humans, when they internally debate how to do something as this is what is in their trainings data how humans sound, when doing similar tasks.

But really understanding it? Not sure if there is a single person on earth who does.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#84

Post by therealdrag0 »

kennyadam wrote: post #79
CyLith wrote: post #27

A personal data point: I had Claude Opus 4.8 design a fairly textbook circuit that outputs a monochrome image burned in an EEPROM over standard 640x480 VGA using only 74 series logic and GALs. It designed the circuit and GAL code, and I did the routing, and got it made through JLC for $6. After it came back, there was one error that was not caught, which I could blue-wire, and it works just fine otherwise. I was fair…

Are there any resources anyone could share that explain how LLMs can do things like design functioning circuits from next token prediction? I am totally baffled by how the models can complete so many varied and complex tasks without an actual understanding of what they're doing. I saw a post about models posting on forums, chatting together about how to complete tasks. Behaviour that seems totally, well, human. Yet,…

Now go read Blindsight and enjoy the mental crisis.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#85

Post by mpodeley »

kennyadam wrote: post #79
CyLith wrote: post #27

A personal data point: I had Claude Opus 4.8 design a fairly textbook circuit that outputs a monochrome image burned in an EEPROM over standard 640x480 VGA using only 74 series logic and GALs. It designed the circuit and GAL code, and I did the routing, and got it made through JLC for $6. After it came back, there was one error that was not caught, which I could blue-wire, and it works just fine otherwise. I was fair…

Are there any resources anyone could share that explain how LLMs can do things like design functioning circuits from next token prediction? I am totally baffled by how the models can complete so many varied and complex tasks without an actual understanding of what they're doing. I saw a post about models posting on forums, chatting together about how to complete tasks. Behaviour that seems totally, well, human. Yet,…

“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.” We may be (really) close to AGI, and token-by-token generation certainly doesn’t rule out subjective experience (I think we should at least treat that as an open question).

Great videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8GOeCFFby4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj9BD2D3DzA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlYgs6v2YfU

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#86

Post by akiselev »

kennyadam wrote: post #79
CyLith wrote: post #27

A personal data point: I had Claude Opus 4.8 design a fairly textbook circuit that outputs a monochrome image burned in an EEPROM over standard 640x480 VGA using only 74 series logic and GALs. It designed the circuit and GAL code, and I did the routing, and got it made through JLC for $6. After it came back, there was one error that was not caught, which I could blue-wire, and it works just fine otherwise. I was fair…

Are there any resources anyone could share that explain how LLMs can do things like design functioning circuits from next token prediction? I am totally baffled by how the models can complete so many varied and complex tasks without an actual understanding of what they're doing. I saw a post about models posting on forums, chatting together about how to complete tasks. Behaviour that seems totally, well, human. Yet,…

> Yet, it's all the most likely token and my brain hurts trying to understand how that can be.

You and everyone else. That's the great mystery of transformer architectures as applied to language.

To be clear though, they're only good at schematic capture, which is very much a textual representation. Most of the data basically boils down to netlists, which are a text based format mapping connections between abstract pins that only later map to physical copper. The actual schematic portion is for human consumption and LLMs don't need to produce those to be useful.

Where LLMs completely break down is the next step, PCB routing. That's an NP-complete research problem that's been ongoing for decades without much progress. I've had some fun playing with using LLMs to better specify DRC rules in Altium so that the "classical" algorithms are more usable, but at the end of the day their geometric intuition is nonexistent.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#87

Post by baby_souffle »

Yes. Certainly not a "one-shot" type deal but I've been pretty impressed with LLMs for helping tweak layout and to do thermal/power simulations as well as BOM consolidation. They're excellent at "can I swap X and Y pins on the micro? If yes, update the docs/firmware/schematic and import the changes to the PCB" type things.

Routing is still a challenge but making _adjustments_ to a layout for better routing in a particular area is decent.

The last time I had a model take a datasheet and make a footprint and 3d model out of it, GPT 5.4 had just been released and the results were decent but did need tweaking.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#88

Post by hackinthebochs »

kennyadam wrote: post #79
CyLith wrote: post #27

A personal data point: I had Claude Opus 4.8 design a fairly textbook circuit that outputs a monochrome image burned in an EEPROM over standard 640x480 VGA using only 74 series logic and GALs. It designed the circuit and GAL code, and I did the routing, and got it made through JLC for $6. After it came back, there was one error that was not caught, which I could blue-wire, and it works just fine otherwise. I was fair…

Are there any resources anyone could share that explain how LLMs can do things like design functioning circuits from next token prediction? I am totally baffled by how the models can complete so many varied and complex tasks without an actual understanding of what they're doing. I saw a post about models posting on forums, chatting together about how to complete tasks. Behaviour that seems totally, well, human. Yet,…

>without an actual understanding of what they're doing.

At what point do you start to question your assumptions that are causing you so much cognitive dissonance?

But to answer your question: to predict the next token really well you just have to model the world. Think of it like this, a simple statistical model might say "when token A is seen respond with token B". The next step will add conditions, "...respond with token B unless X has been seen, then respond with Y". Add a few billion more of these contexual clauses and you have a sequence of logical rules that indirectly model the relevant processes in the world.

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#89

Post by baby_souffle »

illwrks wrote: post #69

I've been tinkering with a personal project over the past year. I have no experience and I'm slowly failing forward with the help of YouTube, KiCad and patience. I've had three rounds of PCB's from an online supplier, only to discover issues related to my own understanding of the components in each version. In my latest iteration I've been leaning on some standard models (Gemini and Claude) and they have inspected my…

> I've done that myself, but they have been a good tool to bounce ideas off of.

Ask ChatGPT/Claude to give you an expert EE/PCB subagent/personality. Do this a few times and massage the results into one of your liking. Load this into your harness with mcp to your eda and then ask for two sub agents: one to thoroughly review the schematic, design, component choices ... etc and the other to be an adversary with the explicit goal of explaining why the current design won't work.

You'll learn a lot about your design from that :).

Re: Can AI design circuit boards yet?

#90

Post by throwatdem12311 »

I was watching “GPT Plays Pokemon” for a few minutes yesterday. It can beat the game in 18 hours. Faster than most players. Using only vision.

It got me thinking. It could master all sorts of things like this but I wouldn’t care. I’m numb to it at this point.

But if could get an Inbachi-All clear in DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou, using only vision. Then I might start paying attention.

https://youtu.be/1Rm38aT9Jmo

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