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ChatGPT for Hardware Design

JamesHinnek 3y ago
How do I exclude my account?
rock_hard 3y ago
Founder here: Incredibly stoked to announce this today! This is a dream a long time in the making. When we first thought of rebuilding the hardware design tooling stack from scratch, AI driven design seemed like the dream at the end of the tunnel...only 3+ years later we are here Given the open ended nature of AI Expert agents we are launching a community preview. We are committed to keep building http://flux.ai http://flux.ai in the open and are excited to discover this new realm with all of you. Hit me with questions
- causi 3y ago
  GPT is really bad at math. Doesn't that mean it's also bad at doing the math for designing circuits?
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Here's another interesting idea: the marketing blurb mentions reducing costly errors—but with the amount ChatGPT hallucinates, how does this work? What steps have been taken to mitigate hallucination?
    - rock_hard 3y ago
      LLMs do indeed hallucinate. What’s been working well for us is to give it access to factual data sources such as calculators, component data sheets, etc. It does really well from our tests in the past few weeks, so well that we decided to invite everyone to explore the boundaries with a community preview Just give it a shot and report back
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        Can you elaborate on "really well"? Because a few weeks of testing and "really well" versus the claim of reducing costly mistakes on the marketing blurb whilst simultaneously acknowledging hallucination doesn't inspire confidence. I'd be interested to know a lot more about testing methodology too. A hallucination could be a much more expensive problem than someone simply making a basic mistake that someone might otherwise catch if they were doing things the usual way. Not trying to be obstinate, genuinely interested, but sceptical as my experience of ChatGPT has been very negative due to hallucinations, to the point that I find that the marketing materials sound far too good to be true versus the comment here, which seems much more grounded.
        rock_hard 3y ago
        Please def report back if you encounter it to hallucinate This is exactly why we are doing the community preview…to make it your favorite design tool.
        rock_hard 3y ago
        To give you an example of the typical response quality we encountered: @copilot can you design a low pass filter for me with 3db point of 300khz? copilot: Sure, I can help you design a low-pass filter with a 3dB point of 300 kHz. A simple passive RC (resistor-capacitor) low-pass filter can be used for this purpose. To calculate the values of the resistor (R) and capacitor (C), you can use the following formula: f_c = 1 / (2 pi R * C) Where f_c is the 3dB cutoff frequency (300 kHz), R is the resistor value, and C is the capacitor value. Let's choose a standard resistor value, for example, 1 kΩ. Then, you can calculate the capacitor value as follows: C = 1 / (2 pi R f_c) = 1 / (2 pi 1000 300000) ≈ 530.5 pF Since 530.5 pF is not a standard capacitor value, you can use the closest standard value, which is 560 pF. With these values, the actual 3dB cutoff frequency will be approximately: f_c = 1 / (2 pi 1000 * 560e-12) ≈ 283.5 kHz The low-pass filter can be assembled by connecting the 1 kΩ resistor in series with the input signal, followed by the 560 pF capacitor connected to the ground. The filtered output can be taken across the capacitor. This design will give you a first-order RC low-pass filter with an actual 3dB point of approximately 283.5 kHz.
  - rock_hard 3y ago
    I hope it would not lol For starters: From our testing it’s really extremely good at providing the right formulas to solve the problem at hand. But you are right, these models are inheritely non deterministic and therefore can struggle with things like math. The solution is to provide it access to tools such as a calculator which works really well.
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    Maybe not. It understands data sheets, and seems to be able to connect the dots based on probabilities around connecting components together. If you don't ask it to do large-scale design tasks, it's okay at narrowly scoped tasks like this. If it's wrong, you can determine that during simulation. You could also assert that in the background, I suppose — prune the bunk suggestions by the language model before presenting them. In my own experiments I find GPT can succeed in complex tasks if you prompt it multiple times at different steps of the task, and have some level of recursive validation and re-prompting to keep it in line. In a case like this I have a feeling it would do a great job, and would be especially useful for the discovery/exploration phase of a new project.
  - xyzzy123 3y ago
    Have you tried recently? I am getting surprisingly good results lately with GPT-4 on basic physics problems with no prompt engineering (just stating the problem). It seems to recognize when it needs to "think step by step" and just do it.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  If this works well, are you interested in training a model specifically around the domain you work in so you could get deeper integration with your product? I have a personal project similar in concept to flux, but rather than working at the circuit level, it's at the device, firmware, and infrastructure level. I've been trying to use GPT to intuit how to network devices using different protocols, such that it might be easier for lab techs (for example) to discover how to manage and maintain their experiment tooling and infrastructure. It's really hard, though. The outputs and level of integration are mind-bendingly good, but... It's not perfect, which makes it too clumsy or even dangerous for what I want to build. I think I envision something like GPT transforming human language into prompts for a narrower model with more predictable outputs, which is far more aware and capable with the application's logic and data. The user experience could then give you the conversational ease, yet far better application integration as well. Anyway, just curious what you're thinking and very excited about projects like this. This is really cool.
  - rock_hard 3y ago
    Yea def looking into this We already use a multi model approach and mix of non deterministic and deterministic tooling in the pipeline to optimize for a given task Lots of more work to be done here
    - heyzk 3y ago
      The flux docs indicate that you're using a custom-trained LLM and in another comment it was mentioned you're using LangChain (to integrate non-deterministic tooling perhaps). Just curious, but are you using some combination of your own model, GPT3/4, and calculators / datasheet readers / etc?
      - rock_hard 3y ago
        The answer is: all of it! Not everything is in prod yet but we def combine all the things you can imagine to pull this off
- nunuvit 3y ago
  Have you reevaluated the decision not to implement much by way of basic interface features like symbol and footprint editors for such a long time? It's a real barrier to even playing around with the software. I want to see you succeed, and my experience in the EDA industry and as an electrical engineer is making me wonder about that approach. It makes sense if you're just shopping it around to the EDA incumbents since they'd have you redesign those parts anyway, but the fact that you currently offer a paid subscription to users makes me think that either you've underestimated or I've overestimated the importance of having those features by now. I guess that could also make sense if you want a more manageable user base for now.
  - rock_hard 3y ago
    Not sure I follow…maybe there is a misunderstanding here We do have symbol and footprint creation and editing capabilities…in fact the vast majority of parts on the platform have been created by users. Now what we don’t do is offer a modal editor like legacy tools do…instead it happens all in the same mode, which simplifies a lot of the UX and also provides powerful new abilities such using a schematic to create simulation models. Now that said I think we can do a lot more here to further improve the experience and we def will but you are right in that it hasn’t been much of an issue which is because you have access to a vast preexisting library in the platform
    - nunuvit 3y ago
      The last time I tried to evaluate it was a long time ago and it seemed to be all svg uploads. I had to re-read the docs more closely after reading your comment. It says you need to enter svg only for non-rectangular symbols, but it's not clear if you can create or modify a pad shape other than circular or rectangular from within the tool. Obviously good progress, and more than I understood when I wrote my previous comment. That's minimum viable for many to start using it, so my concerns are addressed. The single mode thing is cool.
      - rock_hard 3y ago
        Thanks for giving us another shot The circular and rectangular options have a bunch of transformations available…you can make turn circles into oblong shapes simple by providing async size value and you can set a corner radius for rectangular pads and even your layout. And as you probably saw you can load symbols as svg and you can also load custom pad, layout and silk shapes either as svg or dxf Less known but also works for shapes that you are reading off datasheets is that you can also just type in a svg path into the shape field of each object type How philosophy is to make the most common things really simple and straightforward and the edge cases possible. But yeah, someday we’ll also ship online shape editing features
- gowld 3y ago
  > rebuilding the hardware design tooling stack from scratch This kind of talk is tacky and repels technical users.
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  when I'm building circuits, usually I know what I want to design on a high level, but once it comes time to turn the schematic into a BOM, I get bogged down in minute differences between similar components e.g. most recently, I needed a boost converter with at least 300mA sustained I at 3.3V coming from the lowest V source possible (alkaline battery powered gadget) After an hour or so of searching I had to choose between TLV61220 and TPS61021A . Maybe there is a better third chip? At this point I ran out of time to research and just figured this the TPS61021A would do. Digikey/Mouser/etc have parametric filtering (when it works), but optimization among three variables is not the strong suit there, especially when you have, say, an 8mm square to fill and cost is a factor (and availability/flexibility between footprints) I would love to use this as a fair recommendation engine (that isn't sponsored by TI, skewing all results towards their products) where I can give it my circuit's minimum/recommended/maximum parameters and have it suggest applicable parts, or even take my finished designs and suggest cheaper alternatives for parts that match the design's footprints but have lower capabilities, if that's all my circuit needed in the first place. (just threw my query into chatgpt and it suggested https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61221 https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61221) not bad.
- newswasboring 3y ago
  I would love to hear/read about your journey. Especially what your thoughts were at the start. There wasn't much like ChatGPT when you started 3 years ago, wasn't that fog scary af? How many times did you pivot/change your AI models?
  - rock_hard 3y ago
    We knew that we had to build a foundation first to have any shot at getting AI right. I worked at Meta for years and knew first hand that ML/AI can only ever get good with loooots of training data. So we needed a way to produce lots of high quality training data first and a way for users to be able to reason about results and edit them. There is a graveyard of failed AI hardware design projects and one thing they all have in common is that they are black boxes…its very obviously the wrong approach. But every week a new one pops up…I don’t even understand why anyone funds this stuff anymore frankly…it can’t work. So we embarked on building our own eCAD editor first…that was gonna be step number one. It was also the hardest and most expensive way to go about it… but if you have big dreams then you just have to go and do big things. I recent these get rich quick schemes personally anyways…I love doing hard things! LLMs just starting to get good around the time we had the editor ready for public launch (after years of beta) was a happy coincidence that makes us look like geniuses now. But I take it lol. We had been actively playing on the side for the past 6 months on ideas for first AI features as we geared up for launch of the core editor but the critical insight to use our existing projects comments surface was a last minute brain fart that came to us about 6 weeks ago. Things went pretty quick from there and we are moving extremely fast now that we have the right foundation. Excited times!
greg 3y ago
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 needed between component A and B". For that, we adopted the popular langchain framework to integrate specific "tools" into the AI for specific recognizable problems.
- ugh123 3y ago
  Do you do any fine tuning of the model for circuit analysis and other hardware design literature?
- joshuanapoli 3y ago
  How do you deal with designs whose netlist or part list exceeds the context size limit?
  - rock_hard 3y ago
    It’s indeed a challenge For many applications such as talking to pdfs you can use a vectors db like pinecone But that doesn’t work well for schematics because for of the interesting use cases you need access to the whole thing. Here is what’s been working for us 1. Extreme compression and summarization of the data we dynamically put in the context 2. Leverage the extreme amount of world knowledge the cutting edge models have
- arcticbull 3y ago
  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 3.7V which obviously wouldn't be compatible with its LM7805 recommendation. It also recommends an ESP8266 which is a 3.3V part so neither of the recommended regulators, nor the battery alone, would be appropriate. Also, it recommends a 168MHz STM ARM micro - but it already has an ESP8266 with GPIO. I'm not sure what it's suggesting I build but it doesn't really sound like a working environmental radiation logger ;) How should I think about this?
mhb 3y ago
I recently used ChatGPT to find a part. Maybe this was an anomalous result, but it was wrong. Don't know if this will be an issue with your project. Me: Is there a digital to analog converter with an 8V analog range and serial input? CGPT: Yes, there are several digital-to-analog converters (DACs) available with an 8V analog range and serial input. One example is the AD5541A DAC from Analog Devices. It has a 16-bit resolution and can accept serial input in the form of SPI or QSPI signals. The output voltage range is programmable and can be set to 0 to 8V using an external reference voltage. Another example is the MAX5389 DAC from Maxim Integrated. It has an 8-bit resolution and can accept serial input in the form of I2C signals. The output voltage range is also programmable and can be set to 0 to 8V using an external reference voltage. These are just a couple of examples, but there are many other DACs available from different manufacturers that meet your specifications. Me: Those parts are limited to 6v max CGPT: I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. You are correct that the AD5541A and MAX5389 DACs have a maximum output voltage range of 5V, and they cannot meet your requirement of an 8V analog range. However, there are other DACs that can meet your specifications. For example, the DAC5578 from Texas Instruments is a 16-bit DAC that can operate from a single 5V supply and has a programmable output range up to 10V. It also supports a serial interface with SPI or MICROWIRE protocols. Another option is the MCP49xx series from Microchip, which includes several DACs with output voltage ranges up to 10V and a serial interface with SPI or QSPI protocols. I hope this information is helpful, and please let me know if you have any further questions.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Can report similar experiences. Just signed up for a free account, will give it a try, but expecting hallucination to be a major issue.
- pulvinar 3y ago
  Interesting. I tried the same question (each a new conversation, GPT4) and 10V and above it catches, but 8V seems to be in its blind spot. Maybe it hasn't learned anywhere to take absolute maximum ratings seriously?
  - pulvinar 3y ago
markwu2001 3y ago
PCB Designer on the team: Holy cow this is awesome! The integration of project context with an LLM enabled more than the sum of its parts when it comes to information access. When designing circuits for fast iterations, you're constantly managing risk and time expenditure; this leads to copying a lot of "flight heritage" circuits so to speak. With the LLM, I'm able to get highly condensed starting points for better circuits when it comes to simplicity, understandability, or performance. As of right now, all I have to do is fact check the solution which is much easier than synthesizing one myself. I'm citing the example where I got it to design me a viable high gain analog frontend that meets my gain, bandwidth, noise, and biasing requirements.
- nullsense 3y ago
  How often is it able to get it right first try?
  - markwu2001 3y ago
    I'll interpret "right" as in giving correct information. I found that it depends on the type of question asked; if it's somewhat general information such as design concepts and design topologies, it impressively nails it 99% of the time for my limited testing period. The main area it gets things wrong relates to very specific information that has only one source: e.g. datasheet specs. I heard the team already has plans to mitigate hallucinations on this front. Also, I find myself having a conversation as I would with a real person, so it's less of spitting out the right answer for any technical question I might have, but more of a design buddy to consult when you're blocked on your search through the massive electronics solution space. Of course, this is a very preliminary use case and I can't wait to see what other people use it for.
- gfodor 3y ago
  I’ve been interested in learning how to design PCBs, I wonder if this tech helps constrain the set of things one ought to focus on learning, with the assumption that AI can fill in other areas.
  - 3y ago
fortyseven 3y ago
Why on earth would you call this "copilot" when GitHub has already long established that as a name in this space? :I
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Yeah, this seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Rename it to 'Solder' or something before that happens.
  - celeritascelery 3y ago
    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.
    - gojomo 3y ago
      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 https://trademarks.justia.com/974/60/github-97460083.html
      - pulvinar 3y ago
        Presumedly they would likewise register "Flux Copilot"?
        gojomo 3y ago
        Do you think I could offer a custom-built Windows PC under the registered trademark "Gordon's Macintosh"?
        pulvinar 3y ago
        Except that "copilot" doesn't appear to be registered by itself in this field, only in combinations. But we'll see.
zlstone1992 3y ago
This is absolutely been a long-wait implementation of GPT. What is the process of adding component to the list? Additional, could rule to been user defined (to minimum EMI/EMC, e.g.)?
- rock_hard 3y ago
  Yeah you can create your own components or work with the over 250k we have in the public library. Flux is designed much like GitHub in this regard…you can fork other people projects and what not. You can already ask it today to perform EMI/EMC checks for you…and we have started thinking about using it to write static rules for you among other things
lloydatkinson 3y ago
It's AI said it added components to the schematic but there is nothing there?
aloer 3y ago
The timing could not be more perfect. Yesterday I realized that I need to create my very first PCB to repair and smartify a device that I broke. Today I thought I should use ChatGPT to better understand how things work. And now this. There are a lot of space constraints so first thing is figuring out if it is even possible to build as small as needed. Usually I would probably be better off starting to build big first and then scale down. But I feel confident that I can already get quite far with the amazing resources out there. I spent hours watching videos about soldering, PCB design, some of the components I think I would need (very flat flexible cables, small ESP32 SMD, no space for USB) and then how to start actually doing the work. My last exposure to electronics was in grade 8 and that was very heavy on cables. This 3h video here was very helpful to understand the process. It's an overview of building your own ESP32 dev board with EasyEDA from start to finish: https://youtu.be/S_p0YV-JlfU https://youtu.be/S_p0YV-JlfU I like these top-down big picture kind of things that go over everything in just enough detail to know what to search for. Does something like this but with flux.ai exist for complete beginners? The tutorials seem more focused on users switching over from other PCB design tools. Every step of the way I am just amazed how today I can get physical things custom made and shipped within days. And then there's fun videos like this here: Small scale fully automated PCB production in what is basically a garage -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6ljHUx_IM&t=800s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6ljHUx_IM&t=800s
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That last video... drool.
phendrenad2 3y ago
Flux is cool, but I don't know who the customer is. I feel like, as a hobbyist maker, I might be it and just don't know it?
- rock_hard 3y ago
  Our Mission is to take the "hard" out of hardware so anyone, from makers to businesses, can easily turn ideas into products. So def give it a shot!
lnsru 3y ago
Nice stuff. But hard to find good application in my environment for it. I mostly re-work old designs or use reference designs with particular chips (that the company has in stock at the moment). Maybe somebody could greatly benefit without the limitations I have at work.
masto 3y ago
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.
- jrockway 3y ago
  Most "annoyance blocker" filterlists get these. In this case it's intercom.io which I block with Adguard's Annoyances lists: https://adguard.com/kb/general/ad-filtering/adguard-filters/ https://adguard.com/kb/general/ad-filtering/adguard-filters/
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    I can't imagine using the internet without uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, and a whole host (no pun intended) of filter lists.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- LesZedCB 3y ago
  > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - ngngngng 3y ago
    Just flag the comment
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  Ah the trusted HN top comment that’s never about the product but a complaint about a minor marketing annoyance on the website.
amelius 3y ago
This phones home, so I cannot use this as per my company's regulations.
amelius 3y ago
What I want most is simulation models of commercial components, and a good simulator... Oh and something that can read datasheets for me, and extract important parameters (or convert them to spice models). A tool that can hunt for cheap components would also be nice. Apart from that, I don't think I like to have any fuzziness in my workflow.
- rock_hard 3y ago
  Yes, us too! We are working on all of this right now and have a bunch more announcements over the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned!
tails4e 3y ago
Is there anything like this for ASIC design / Verilog?
- jlokier 3y ago
  RapidGPT for FPGAs maybe. https://rapidsilicon.com/rapidgpt/ https://rapidsilicon.com/rapidgpt/
scottmcleod 3y ago
Amazing
ironbound 3y ago
This was a good talk on routing https://theamphour.com/626-intelligent-routing-with-sergiy-nesterenko/ https://theamphour.com/626-intelligent-routing-with-sergiy-n...
leokeba 3y ago
Github auth seems broken for me on chrome mac, anyone else ? Here's the error on the login page : You are already signed in, please try signing out and signing in again, or contact us for help. Sometimes I get sent to a profile page, but trying to create a project sends me back to the login page.
- greg 3y ago
  Thanks for the report. I’ll look into it tomorrow.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  Same with login with Google
negative_zero 3y ago
I don't mean to sound like a real downer: but I don't see this tool "getting good" for the simple reason of: what are you training it with? I thought ML needs huge datasets? This is great for GitHub's Copilot as there is plenty of high quality, production, open source code they've used without authorisation from the creators (and possibly proprietary code). But this dataset just doesn't exist for hardware development on the internet. Almost everything on the net is hobbyist stuff. Great for hand building 10 on a desk but absolute rubbish for a (even horribly) manufacturable and COMPLIANT product. Further: an anecdotal, but to me very telling, one liner from the video "the component is "not use for new designs" but we can ignore that because there's 260,000 of them". I have personally sniped larger quantities than that from digikey. "Not for new design" means you don't use it in a new design. PERIOD. And ironically, for something like a Murata cap, they've probably literally changed one letter in the PN because they've made a tiny process or recepie change and its more a "move everyone to the new iteration" process. I do sincerely wish them success and maybe they can carved out a small bit of the hobbyist market but that's probably it.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  That's generally true for ChatGPT generating code as well. Nevertheless, I've been able to ask it to solve some semi complicated coding problems, along with unit tests. The code that it generated was structurally better than a lot of junior to mid level engineers. It also made some similar mistakes to what you describe, with silly things like the wrong parameter names. It still saved a lot of typing compared to doing it all manually. It didn't take long to fix it either, it just required fairly decent software engineering skills. How is this relevant to circuit design? Well, in the same way it could potentially be an effort amplifier for people who already thoroughly know what they are doing. AI is on the verge of becoming a really powerful lever.
- rock_hard 3y ago
  I think you should give it a shot and see for yourself This is a first step today, it’s neither done nor perfect…but it kept blowing our and our our most senior testers minds and so we decided to not withhold this incredible technology and rather invite to open experimentation and learning.
1letterunixname 3y ago
We are witnessing the arrival of the technological singularity in slow motion. It is becoming possible for AI systems to rapidly design hardware and software systems from the requirements of individuals who do not necessarily understand the subject matter. I give tech 10 years before most of it is accomplished by AI and most people in tech will be forced out. Like DC elevators, some will remain, but not like it was.
- x86x87 3y ago
  i give AI at least another 500 years until the I in AI actually stands for intelligence. See what I did there? Everyone can make outrageous claims without backing them up whatsoever :)
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    Nope. You added nothing of value. You can be a fool and deny numerous forms of narrow AI while AGI is a flying car distraction that doesn't matter. It is your error conflating the two.
    - x86x87 3y ago
      Yes. My claim is not TRULY outrageous /s
drones 3y ago
As someone who is not well versed in the current LLM paradigm, how are the LLMs for technical domains trained? I can imagine how a model based off interent text would make for a _general_ conversational partner, but I'm unsure how a model would produce accurate information from such a niche prompt. Also curious: has anyone created an LLM for circuit schematics trained on HDL code? Very cool application. It's nice to be reminded that people are actually trying to make useful products in a world where it seems everyone is trying to sell you a solution with no problem.
- rock_hard 3y ago
  For starters you can feed it every book on electronics and every datasheet out there That plus broad world knowledge and reasoning abilities gets you very far And then you dynamically provide proper context and prompting as well as deterministic tooling such as a calculator to and voila…you got your new favorite virtual team mate :)
digitcatphd 3y ago
Excellent product! I’m curious how you are communicating data from the project and handling memory to ChatGPT, have you found it handles new external data well without first modifying its format or structure or have you had any memory issues?
exmadscientist 3y ago
Senior EE here! I'm not at all impressed with this page because you don't show the tool doing anything interesting. All your examples are undergrad-course or lower level of difficulty. I feel like reading several of the tool's responses actually wasted my time because it took longer for me to read the text than to come up with a better answer. (Though admittedly I've been at this a while. And the check-if-I-screwed-up-the-chip-select one was pretty neat, I did like that!) Can you demo something with a little more bite to it? Seeing that you can help me save time on actually-meaty pieces of design work would make a lot of difference for me. Maybe something like "design a correctly biased class-AB output stage, with rail-to-rail swing on +/-5V rails, intended for use boosting op-amp output current"? That is an interesting one because (1) it's a small but real, useful, meaty problem with (2) a lot of examples out there in the world to copy from with (3) a nontrivial added constraint in rail-to-rail out but (4) even solutions that aren't all the way there are useful.
- potatofrenzy 3y ago
  I've been playing with this for a while. In my experience, current LLMs work really well for looking up general electronics knowledge and reinterpreting it in the context of your problem. "What are the reasons my resistor-based voltage divider isn't working", that kind of stuff. Not useful for seasoned EEs, great for hobbyists. But the moment you're asking LLMs to reason about the specs or the applications of specific chips, they will give made-up answers around 80% of the time. This is probably a matter of the data being a bit too sparse. Pick a chip and ask about its supply voltage range, and it will probably get it wrong, even for the most popular stuff.
  - exmadscientist 3y ago
    > the moment you're asking LLMs to reason about the specs or the applications of specific chips, they will give made-up answers around 80% of the time. This is probably a matter of the data being a bit too sparse. Pick a chip and ask about its supply voltage range, and it will probably get it wrong But isn't your supply voltage example exactly the sort of stuff they should get right? It's just regurgitating data sheets. I kind of expect a tool like this to be able to operate in one of two, theoretically distinct (but maybe not practically distinct) modes. One is basically "blueprints", very much in line with the example I suggested earlier: draw me up one of these that fits in here. I wouldn't expect creativity, just more or less rote execution of a common plan. The other mode let's call "tuning": continuing with the class-AB stage example, this would be things like setting the biasing resistors correctly. That's a tedious task, possibly requiring simulation to do well, possibly just copyable, but with a large margin for usable results. I may not care exactly what I get as long as it's somewhat workable, which would be a good place for machine help. Or I might just want a decent starting point for my own simulation. I think "AI" techniques could handle either of those general modes and produce useful (if imperfect) results that save overall time. What I don't expect AI to do is design architectures for me, or pick approaches. A tremendous amount of my value-add as an engineer is just me saying "no, don't choose approach A, I know it looks nearly equivalent to B on paper, but B is going to work out better". AI is not there now and I don't see LLM-style AI getting there any time soon, just by its nature. (At least not when it's a genuine judgement question and not an education/"A is never right" situation.) What I don't think AI can do but I really, really wish it could is help me pick parts. All it needs to do for this is read and halfassedly-understand a bunch of datasheets, more datasheets than I can read myself. I think LLMs can do that! Though they might need to also be able to read graphs or simple diagrams ("Find me an EEPROM in the 208-mil SOIC package" is a great prompt and seems thoroughly actionable! But sometimes that dimension is only provided as part of the package drawing, which might be an issue.) Recently I needed a PMOS FET with particular specs and was getting frustrated not finding quite what I wanted. So I asked ChatGPT. It was great at making me laugh and giving me a little break from datasheets! It did not actually help find a part. (It kept suggesting NMOS parts when I needed and asked for PMOS.)
neodypsis 3y ago
I wanted to give it a try, so I went to sign-up with Github but the process failed. So then I signed-out of Github and tried to login again but Flux loaded someone else's profile! Had to de-authorize Flux from my Github.
- robertfall 3y ago
  neodypsis reached out and we got to the bottom of this. When a user visits a Flux project without being signed in we create a temporary anonymous user record for them so that they can interact with the document. These user records are populated with human-like names (which is partially to blame for the confusion here. We'll fix that.) When a user signs up their anonymous record is updated with the details they provide but the record id remains the same so we can keep the user's interaction history. In this case when the Github sign up failed the process stopped half way. The anonymous account was never updated with the username neodypsis provided but appeared to be someone else's account (a human name followed by several numbers). We've verified that the account was indeed linked to neodypsis' Github profile and no-one else had ever had access to it. We've started some work to improve the OAuth sign up process.
- robertfall 3y ago
  Hi, I'm on call for the team this week. We'd love to get more information here as we take anything around privacy and authentication very seriously. I'd like to get usernames of profiles involved and rule out being redirected back to a page you were visiting before signing in. Would you be open to discussing further? You can reach me at robert.herbst@flux.ai. Being able to discuss with you directly would be really helpful. Alternatively we actively monitor and respond to bug reports filed here: https://feedback.flux.ai/bugreports https://feedback.flux.ai/bugreports
Archit3ch 3y ago
Ah, yes, "confident" and "wrong" is exactly the combination I need when designing with lethal voltages. /s

How do I exclude my account?

Founder here: Incredibly stoked to announce this today! This is a dream a long time in the making. When we first thought of rebuilding the hardware design tooling stack from scratch, AI driven design seemed like the dream at the end of the tunnel...only 3+ years later we are here Given the open ended nature of AI Expert agents we are launching a community preview. We are committed to keep building http://flux.ai http://flux.ai in the open and are excited to discover this new realm with all of you. Hit me with questions

causi 3y ago
GPT is really bad at math. Doesn't that mean it's also bad at doing the math for designing circuits?
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Here's another interesting idea: the marketing blurb mentions reducing costly errors—but with the amount ChatGPT hallucinates, how does this work? What steps have been taken to mitigate hallucination?
  - rock_hard 3y ago
    LLMs do indeed hallucinate. What’s been working well for us is to give it access to factual data sources such as calculators, component data sheets, etc. It does really well from our tests in the past few weeks, so well that we decided to invite everyone to explore the boundaries with a community preview Just give it a shot and report back
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      Can you elaborate on "really well"? Because a few weeks of testing and "really well" versus the claim of reducing costly mistakes on the marketing blurb whilst simultaneously acknowledging hallucination doesn't inspire confidence. I'd be interested to know a lot more about testing methodology too. A hallucination could be a much more expensive problem than someone simply making a basic mistake that someone might otherwise catch if they were doing things the usual way. Not trying to be obstinate, genuinely interested, but sceptical as my experience of ChatGPT has been very negative due to hallucinations, to the point that I find that the marketing materials sound far too good to be true versus the comment here, which seems much more grounded.
      - rock_hard 3y ago
        Please def report back if you encounter it to hallucinate This is exactly why we are doing the community preview…to make it your favorite design tool.
      - rock_hard 3y ago
        To give you an example of the typical response quality we encountered: @copilot can you design a low pass filter for me with 3db point of 300khz? copilot: Sure, I can help you design a low-pass filter with a 3dB point of 300 kHz. A simple passive RC (resistor-capacitor) low-pass filter can be used for this purpose. To calculate the values of the resistor (R) and capacitor (C), you can use the following formula: f_c = 1 / (2 pi R * C) Where f_c is the 3dB cutoff frequency (300 kHz), R is the resistor value, and C is the capacitor value. Let's choose a standard resistor value, for example, 1 kΩ. Then, you can calculate the capacitor value as follows: C = 1 / (2 pi R f_c) = 1 / (2 pi 1000 300000) ≈ 530.5 pF Since 530.5 pF is not a standard capacitor value, you can use the closest standard value, which is 560 pF. With these values, the actual 3dB cutoff frequency will be approximately: f_c = 1 / (2 pi 1000 * 560e-12) ≈ 283.5 kHz The low-pass filter can be assembled by connecting the 1 kΩ resistor in series with the input signal, followed by the 560 pF capacitor connected to the ground. The filtered output can be taken across the capacitor. This design will give you a first-order RC low-pass filter with an actual 3dB point of approximately 283.5 kHz.
- rock_hard 3y ago
  I hope it would not lol For starters: From our testing it’s really extremely good at providing the right formulas to solve the problem at hand. But you are right, these models are inheritely non deterministic and therefore can struggle with things like math. The solution is to provide it access to tools such as a calculator which works really well.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  Maybe not. It understands data sheets, and seems to be able to connect the dots based on probabilities around connecting components together. If you don't ask it to do large-scale design tasks, it's okay at narrowly scoped tasks like this. If it's wrong, you can determine that during simulation. You could also assert that in the background, I suppose — prune the bunk suggestions by the language model before presenting them. In my own experiments I find GPT can succeed in complex tasks if you prompt it multiple times at different steps of the task, and have some level of recursive validation and re-prompting to keep it in line. In a case like this I have a feeling it would do a great job, and would be especially useful for the discovery/exploration phase of a new project.
- xyzzy123 3y ago
  Have you tried recently? I am getting surprisingly good results lately with GPT-4 on basic physics problems with no prompt engineering (just stating the problem). It seems to recognize when it needs to "think step by step" and just do it.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
If this works well, are you interested in training a model specifically around the domain you work in so you could get deeper integration with your product? I have a personal project similar in concept to flux, but rather than working at the circuit level, it's at the device, firmware, and infrastructure level. I've been trying to use GPT to intuit how to network devices using different protocols, such that it might be easier for lab techs (for example) to discover how to manage and maintain their experiment tooling and infrastructure. It's really hard, though. The outputs and level of integration are mind-bendingly good, but... It's not perfect, which makes it too clumsy or even dangerous for what I want to build. I think I envision something like GPT transforming human language into prompts for a narrower model with more predictable outputs, which is far more aware and capable with the application's logic and data. The user experience could then give you the conversational ease, yet far better application integration as well. Anyway, just curious what you're thinking and very excited about projects like this. This is really cool.
- rock_hard 3y ago
  Yea def looking into this We already use a multi model approach and mix of non deterministic and deterministic tooling in the pipeline to optimize for a given task Lots of more work to be done here
  - heyzk 3y ago
    The flux docs indicate that you're using a custom-trained LLM and in another comment it was mentioned you're using LangChain (to integrate non-deterministic tooling perhaps). Just curious, but are you using some combination of your own model, GPT3/4, and calculators / datasheet readers / etc?
    - rock_hard 3y ago
      The answer is: all of it! Not everything is in prod yet but we def combine all the things you can imagine to pull this off
nunuvit 3y ago
Have you reevaluated the decision not to implement much by way of basic interface features like symbol and footprint editors for such a long time? It's a real barrier to even playing around with the software. I want to see you succeed, and my experience in the EDA industry and as an electrical engineer is making me wonder about that approach. It makes sense if you're just shopping it around to the EDA incumbents since they'd have you redesign those parts anyway, but the fact that you currently offer a paid subscription to users makes me think that either you've underestimated or I've overestimated the importance of having those features by now. I guess that could also make sense if you want a more manageable user base for now.
- rock_hard 3y ago
  Not sure I follow…maybe there is a misunderstanding here We do have symbol and footprint creation and editing capabilities…in fact the vast majority of parts on the platform have been created by users. Now what we don’t do is offer a modal editor like legacy tools do…instead it happens all in the same mode, which simplifies a lot of the UX and also provides powerful new abilities such using a schematic to create simulation models. Now that said I think we can do a lot more here to further improve the experience and we def will but you are right in that it hasn’t been much of an issue which is because you have access to a vast preexisting library in the platform
  - nunuvit 3y ago
    The last time I tried to evaluate it was a long time ago and it seemed to be all svg uploads. I had to re-read the docs more closely after reading your comment. It says you need to enter svg only for non-rectangular symbols, but it's not clear if you can create or modify a pad shape other than circular or rectangular from within the tool. Obviously good progress, and more than I understood when I wrote my previous comment. That's minimum viable for many to start using it, so my concerns are addressed. The single mode thing is cool.
    - rock_hard 3y ago
      Thanks for giving us another shot The circular and rectangular options have a bunch of transformations available…you can make turn circles into oblong shapes simple by providing async size value and you can set a corner radius for rectangular pads and even your layout. And as you probably saw you can load symbols as svg and you can also load custom pad, layout and silk shapes either as svg or dxf Less known but also works for shapes that you are reading off datasheets is that you can also just type in a svg path into the shape field of each object type How philosophy is to make the most common things really simple and straightforward and the edge cases possible. But yeah, someday we’ll also ship online shape editing features
gowld 3y ago
> rebuilding the hardware design tooling stack from scratch This kind of talk is tacky and repels technical users.
jareklupinski 3y ago
when I'm building circuits, usually I know what I want to design on a high level, but once it comes time to turn the schematic into a BOM, I get bogged down in minute differences between similar components e.g. most recently, I needed a boost converter with at least 300mA sustained I at 3.3V coming from the lowest V source possible (alkaline battery powered gadget) After an hour or so of searching I had to choose between TLV61220 and TPS61021A . Maybe there is a better third chip? At this point I ran out of time to research and just figured this the TPS61021A would do. Digikey/Mouser/etc have parametric filtering (when it works), but optimization among three variables is not the strong suit there, especially when you have, say, an 8mm square to fill and cost is a factor (and availability/flexibility between footprints) I would love to use this as a fair recommendation engine (that isn't sponsored by TI, skewing all results towards their products) where I can give it my circuit's minimum/recommended/maximum parameters and have it suggest applicable parts, or even take my finished designs and suggest cheaper alternatives for parts that match the design's footprints but have lower capabilities, if that's all my circuit needed in the first place. (just threw my query into chatgpt and it suggested https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61221 https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61221) not bad.
newswasboring 3y ago
I would love to hear/read about your journey. Especially what your thoughts were at the start. There wasn't much like ChatGPT when you started 3 years ago, wasn't that fog scary af? How many times did you pivot/change your AI models?
- rock_hard 3y ago
  We knew that we had to build a foundation first to have any shot at getting AI right. I worked at Meta for years and knew first hand that ML/AI can only ever get good with loooots of training data. So we needed a way to produce lots of high quality training data first and a way for users to be able to reason about results and edit them. There is a graveyard of failed AI hardware design projects and one thing they all have in common is that they are black boxes…its very obviously the wrong approach. But every week a new one pops up…I don’t even understand why anyone funds this stuff anymore frankly…it can’t work. So we embarked on building our own eCAD editor first…that was gonna be step number one. It was also the hardest and most expensive way to go about it… but if you have big dreams then you just have to go and do big things. I recent these get rich quick schemes personally anyways…I love doing hard things! LLMs just starting to get good around the time we had the editor ready for public launch (after years of beta) was a happy coincidence that makes us look like geniuses now. But I take it lol. We had been actively playing on the side for the past 6 months on ideas for first AI features as we geared up for launch of the core editor but the critical insight to use our existing projects comments surface was a last minute brain fart that came to us about 6 weeks ago. Things went pretty quick from there and we are moving extremely fast now that we have the right foundation. Excited times!

greg 3y ago

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 needed between component A and B". For that, we adopted the popular langchain framework to integrate specific "tools" into the AI for specific recognizable problems.

ugh123 3y ago
Do you do any fine tuning of the model for circuit analysis and other hardware design literature?
joshuanapoli 3y ago
How do you deal with designs whose netlist or part list exceeds the context size limit?
- rock_hard 3y ago
  It’s indeed a challenge For many applications such as talking to pdfs you can use a vectors db like pinecone But that doesn’t work well for schematics because for of the interesting use cases you need access to the whole thing. Here is what’s been working for us 1. Extreme compression and summarization of the data we dynamically put in the context 2. Leverage the extreme amount of world knowledge the cutting edge models have
arcticbull 3y ago
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 3.7V which obviously wouldn't be compatible with its LM7805 recommendation. It also recommends an ESP8266 which is a 3.3V part so neither of the recommended regulators, nor the battery alone, would be appropriate. Also, it recommends a 168MHz STM ARM micro - but it already has an ESP8266 with GPIO. I'm not sure what it's suggesting I build but it doesn't really sound like a working environmental radiation logger ;) How should I think about this?

mhb 3y ago

I recently used ChatGPT to find a part. Maybe this was an anomalous result, but it was wrong. Don't know if this will be an issue with your project. Me: Is there a digital to analog converter with an 8V analog range and serial input? CGPT: Yes, there are several digital-to-analog converters (DACs) available with an 8V analog range and serial input. One example is the AD5541A DAC from Analog Devices. It has a 16-bit resolution and can accept serial input in the form of SPI or QSPI signals. The output voltage range is programmable and can be set to 0 to 8V using an external reference voltage. Another example is the MAX5389 DAC from Maxim Integrated. It has an 8-bit resolution and can accept serial input in the form of I2C signals. The output voltage range is also programmable and can be set to 0 to 8V using an external reference voltage. These are just a couple of examples, but there are many other DACs available from different manufacturers that meet your specifications. Me: Those parts are limited to 6v max CGPT: I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. You are correct that the AD5541A and MAX5389 DACs have a maximum output voltage range of 5V, and they cannot meet your requirement of an 8V analog range. However, there are other DACs that can meet your specifications. For example, the DAC5578 from Texas Instruments is a 16-bit DAC that can operate from a single 5V supply and has a programmable output range up to 10V. It also supports a serial interface with SPI or MICROWIRE protocols. Another option is the MCP49xx series from Microchip, which includes several DACs with output voltage ranges up to 10V and a serial interface with SPI or QSPI protocols. I hope this information is helpful, and please let me know if you have any further questions.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
Can report similar experiences. Just signed up for a free account, will give it a try, but expecting hallucination to be a major issue.
pulvinar 3y ago
Interesting. I tried the same question (each a new conversation, GPT4) and 10V and above it catches, but 8V seems to be in its blind spot. Maybe it hasn't learned anywhere to take absolute maximum ratings seriously?
- pulvinar 3y ago

markwu2001 3y ago

PCB Designer on the team: Holy cow this is awesome! The integration of project context with an LLM enabled more than the sum of its parts when it comes to information access. When designing circuits for fast iterations, you're constantly managing risk and time expenditure; this leads to copying a lot of "flight heritage" circuits so to speak. With the LLM, I'm able to get highly condensed starting points for better circuits when it comes to simplicity, understandability, or performance. As of right now, all I have to do is fact check the solution which is much easier than synthesizing one myself. I'm citing the example where I got it to design me a viable high gain analog frontend that meets my gain, bandwidth, noise, and biasing requirements.

nullsense 3y ago
How often is it able to get it right first try?
- markwu2001 3y ago
  I'll interpret "right" as in giving correct information. I found that it depends on the type of question asked; if it's somewhat general information such as design concepts and design topologies, it impressively nails it 99% of the time for my limited testing period. The main area it gets things wrong relates to very specific information that has only one source: e.g. datasheet specs. I heard the team already has plans to mitigate hallucinations on this front. Also, I find myself having a conversation as I would with a real person, so it's less of spitting out the right answer for any technical question I might have, but more of a design buddy to consult when you're blocked on your search through the massive electronics solution space. Of course, this is a very preliminary use case and I can't wait to see what other people use it for.
gfodor 3y ago
I’ve been interested in learning how to design PCBs, I wonder if this tech helps constrain the set of things one ought to focus on learning, with the assumption that AI can fill in other areas.
- 3y ago

fortyseven 3y ago

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

UncleOxidant 3y ago
Yeah, this seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Rename it to 'Solder' or something before that happens.
- celeritascelery 3y ago
  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.
  - gojomo 3y ago
    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 https://trademarks.justia.com/974/60/github-97460083.html
    - pulvinar 3y ago
      Presumedly they would likewise register "Flux Copilot"?
      - gojomo 3y ago
        Do you think I could offer a custom-built Windows PC under the registered trademark "Gordon's Macintosh"?
        pulvinar 3y ago
        Except that "copilot" doesn't appear to be registered by itself in this field, only in combinations. But we'll see.

zlstone1992 3y ago

This is absolutely been a long-wait implementation of GPT. What is the process of adding component to the list? Additional, could rule to been user defined (to minimum EMI/EMC, e.g.)?

rock_hard 3y ago
Yeah you can create your own components or work with the over 250k we have in the public library. Flux is designed much like GitHub in this regard…you can fork other people projects and what not. You can already ask it today to perform EMI/EMC checks for you…and we have started thinking about using it to write static rules for you among other things

lloydatkinson 3y ago

It's AI said it added components to the schematic but there is nothing there?

aloer 3y ago

The timing could not be more perfect. Yesterday I realized that I need to create my very first PCB to repair and smartify a device that I broke. Today I thought I should use ChatGPT to better understand how things work. And now this. There are a lot of space constraints so first thing is figuring out if it is even possible to build as small as needed. Usually I would probably be better off starting to build big first and then scale down. But I feel confident that I can already get quite far with the amazing resources out there. I spent hours watching videos about soldering, PCB design, some of the components I think I would need (very flat flexible cables, small ESP32 SMD, no space for USB) and then how to start actually doing the work. My last exposure to electronics was in grade 8 and that was very heavy on cables. This 3h video here was very helpful to understand the process. It's an overview of building your own ESP32 dev board with EasyEDA from start to finish: https://youtu.be/S_p0YV-JlfU https://youtu.be/S_p0YV-JlfU I like these top-down big picture kind of things that go over everything in just enough detail to know what to search for. Does something like this but with flux.ai exist for complete beginners? The tutorials seem more focused on users switching over from other PCB design tools. Every step of the way I am just amazed how today I can get physical things custom made and shipped within days. And then there's fun videos like this here: Small scale fully automated PCB production in what is basically a garage -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6ljHUx_IM&t=800s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6ljHUx_IM&t=800s

jacquesm 3y ago
That last video... drool.

phendrenad2 3y ago

Flux is cool, but I don't know who the customer is. I feel like, as a hobbyist maker, I might be it and just don't know it?

rock_hard 3y ago
Our Mission is to take the "hard" out of hardware so anyone, from makers to businesses, can easily turn ideas into products. So def give it a shot!

lnsru 3y ago

Nice stuff. But hard to find good application in my environment for it. I mostly re-work old designs or use reference designs with particular chips (that the company has in stock at the moment). Maybe somebody could greatly benefit without the limitations I have at work.

masto 3y ago

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.

jrockway 3y ago
Most "annoyance blocker" filterlists get these. In this case it's intercom.io which I block with Adguard's Annoyances lists: https://adguard.com/kb/general/ad-filtering/adguard-filters/ https://adguard.com/kb/general/ad-filtering/adguard-filters/
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  I can't imagine using the internet without uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, and a whole host (no pun intended) of filter lists.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
LesZedCB 3y ago
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ngngngng 3y ago
  Just flag the comment
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Ah the trusted HN top comment that’s never about the product but a complaint about a minor marketing annoyance on the website.

amelius 3y ago

This phones home, so I cannot use this as per my company's regulations.

amelius 3y ago

What I want most is simulation models of commercial components, and a good simulator... Oh and something that can read datasheets for me, and extract important parameters (or convert them to spice models). A tool that can hunt for cheap components would also be nice. Apart from that, I don't think I like to have any fuzziness in my workflow.

rock_hard 3y ago
Yes, us too! We are working on all of this right now and have a bunch more announcements over the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned!

tails4e 3y ago

Is there anything like this for ASIC design / Verilog?

jlokier 3y ago
RapidGPT for FPGAs maybe. https://rapidsilicon.com/rapidgpt/ https://rapidsilicon.com/rapidgpt/

scottmcleod 3y ago

Amazing

ironbound 3y ago

This was a good talk on routing https://theamphour.com/626-intelligent-routing-with-sergiy-nesterenko/ https://theamphour.com/626-intelligent-routing-with-sergiy-n...

leokeba 3y ago

Github auth seems broken for me on chrome mac, anyone else ? Here's the error on the login page : You are already signed in, please try signing out and signing in again, or contact us for help. Sometimes I get sent to a profile page, but trying to create a project sends me back to the login page.

greg 3y ago
Thanks for the report. I’ll look into it tomorrow.
phendrenad2 3y ago
Same with login with Google

negative_zero 3y ago

I don't mean to sound like a real downer: but I don't see this tool "getting good" for the simple reason of: what are you training it with? I thought ML needs huge datasets? This is great for GitHub's Copilot as there is plenty of high quality, production, open source code they've used without authorisation from the creators (and possibly proprietary code). But this dataset just doesn't exist for hardware development on the internet. Almost everything on the net is hobbyist stuff. Great for hand building 10 on a desk but absolute rubbish for a (even horribly) manufacturable and COMPLIANT product. Further: an anecdotal, but to me very telling, one liner from the video "the component is "not use for new designs" but we can ignore that because there's 260,000 of them". I have personally sniped larger quantities than that from digikey. "Not for new design" means you don't use it in a new design. PERIOD. And ironically, for something like a Murata cap, they've probably literally changed one letter in the PN because they've made a tiny process or recepie change and its more a "move everyone to the new iteration" process. I do sincerely wish them success and maybe they can carved out a small bit of the hobbyist market but that's probably it.

_ea1k 3y ago
That's generally true for ChatGPT generating code as well. Nevertheless, I've been able to ask it to solve some semi complicated coding problems, along with unit tests. The code that it generated was structurally better than a lot of junior to mid level engineers. It also made some similar mistakes to what you describe, with silly things like the wrong parameter names. It still saved a lot of typing compared to doing it all manually. It didn't take long to fix it either, it just required fairly decent software engineering skills. How is this relevant to circuit design? Well, in the same way it could potentially be an effort amplifier for people who already thoroughly know what they are doing. AI is on the verge of becoming a really powerful lever.
rock_hard 3y ago
I think you should give it a shot and see for yourself This is a first step today, it’s neither done nor perfect…but it kept blowing our and our our most senior testers minds and so we decided to not withhold this incredible technology and rather invite to open experimentation and learning.

1letterunixname 3y ago

We are witnessing the arrival of the technological singularity in slow motion. It is becoming possible for AI systems to rapidly design hardware and software systems from the requirements of individuals who do not necessarily understand the subject matter. I give tech 10 years before most of it is accomplished by AI and most people in tech will be forced out. Like DC elevators, some will remain, but not like it was.

x86x87 3y ago
i give AI at least another 500 years until the I in AI actually stands for intelligence. See what I did there? Everyone can make outrageous claims without backing them up whatsoever :)
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Nope. You added nothing of value. You can be a fool and deny numerous forms of narrow AI while AGI is a flying car distraction that doesn't matter. It is your error conflating the two.
  - x86x87 3y ago
    Yes. My claim is not TRULY outrageous /s

drones 3y ago

As someone who is not well versed in the current LLM paradigm, how are the LLMs for technical domains trained? I can imagine how a model based off interent text would make for a _general_ conversational partner, but I'm unsure how a model would produce accurate information from such a niche prompt. Also curious: has anyone created an LLM for circuit schematics trained on HDL code? Very cool application. It's nice to be reminded that people are actually trying to make useful products in a world where it seems everyone is trying to sell you a solution with no problem.

rock_hard 3y ago
For starters you can feed it every book on electronics and every datasheet out there That plus broad world knowledge and reasoning abilities gets you very far And then you dynamically provide proper context and prompting as well as deterministic tooling such as a calculator to and voila…you got your new favorite virtual team mate :)

digitcatphd 3y ago

Excellent product! I’m curious how you are communicating data from the project and handling memory to ChatGPT, have you found it handles new external data well without first modifying its format or structure or have you had any memory issues?

exmadscientist 3y ago

Senior EE here! I'm not at all impressed with this page because you don't show the tool doing anything interesting. All your examples are undergrad-course or lower level of difficulty. I feel like reading several of the tool's responses actually wasted my time because it took longer for me to read the text than to come up with a better answer. (Though admittedly I've been at this a while. And the check-if-I-screwed-up-the-chip-select one was pretty neat, I did like that!) Can you demo something with a little more bite to it? Seeing that you can help me save time on actually-meaty pieces of design work would make a lot of difference for me. Maybe something like "design a correctly biased class-AB output stage, with rail-to-rail swing on +/-5V rails, intended for use boosting op-amp output current"? That is an interesting one because (1) it's a small but real, useful, meaty problem with (2) a lot of examples out there in the world to copy from with (3) a nontrivial added constraint in rail-to-rail out but (4) even solutions that aren't all the way there are useful.

potatofrenzy 3y ago
I've been playing with this for a while. In my experience, current LLMs work really well for looking up general electronics knowledge and reinterpreting it in the context of your problem. "What are the reasons my resistor-based voltage divider isn't working", that kind of stuff. Not useful for seasoned EEs, great for hobbyists. But the moment you're asking LLMs to reason about the specs or the applications of specific chips, they will give made-up answers around 80% of the time. This is probably a matter of the data being a bit too sparse. Pick a chip and ask about its supply voltage range, and it will probably get it wrong, even for the most popular stuff.
- exmadscientist 3y ago
  > the moment you're asking LLMs to reason about the specs or the applications of specific chips, they will give made-up answers around 80% of the time. This is probably a matter of the data being a bit too sparse. Pick a chip and ask about its supply voltage range, and it will probably get it wrong But isn't your supply voltage example exactly the sort of stuff they should get right? It's just regurgitating data sheets. I kind of expect a tool like this to be able to operate in one of two, theoretically distinct (but maybe not practically distinct) modes. One is basically "blueprints", very much in line with the example I suggested earlier: draw me up one of these that fits in here. I wouldn't expect creativity, just more or less rote execution of a common plan. The other mode let's call "tuning": continuing with the class-AB stage example, this would be things like setting the biasing resistors correctly. That's a tedious task, possibly requiring simulation to do well, possibly just copyable, but with a large margin for usable results. I may not care exactly what I get as long as it's somewhat workable, which would be a good place for machine help. Or I might just want a decent starting point for my own simulation. I think "AI" techniques could handle either of those general modes and produce useful (if imperfect) results that save overall time. What I don't expect AI to do is design architectures for me, or pick approaches. A tremendous amount of my value-add as an engineer is just me saying "no, don't choose approach A, I know it looks nearly equivalent to B on paper, but B is going to work out better". AI is not there now and I don't see LLM-style AI getting there any time soon, just by its nature. (At least not when it's a genuine judgement question and not an education/"A is never right" situation.) What I don't think AI can do but I really, really wish it could is help me pick parts. All it needs to do for this is read and halfassedly-understand a bunch of datasheets, more datasheets than I can read myself. I think LLMs can do that! Though they might need to also be able to read graphs or simple diagrams ("Find me an EEPROM in the 208-mil SOIC package" is a great prompt and seems thoroughly actionable! But sometimes that dimension is only provided as part of the package drawing, which might be an issue.) Recently I needed a PMOS FET with particular specs and was getting frustrated not finding quite what I wanted. So I asked ChatGPT. It was great at making me laugh and giving me a little break from datasheets! It did not actually help find a part. (It kept suggesting NMOS parts when I needed and asked for PMOS.)

neodypsis 3y ago

I wanted to give it a try, so I went to sign-up with Github but the process failed. So then I signed-out of Github and tried to login again but Flux loaded someone else's profile! Had to de-authorize Flux from my Github.

robertfall 3y ago
neodypsis reached out and we got to the bottom of this. When a user visits a Flux project without being signed in we create a temporary anonymous user record for them so that they can interact with the document. These user records are populated with human-like names (which is partially to blame for the confusion here. We'll fix that.) When a user signs up their anonymous record is updated with the details they provide but the record id remains the same so we can keep the user's interaction history. In this case when the Github sign up failed the process stopped half way. The anonymous account was never updated with the username neodypsis provided but appeared to be someone else's account (a human name followed by several numbers). We've verified that the account was indeed linked to neodypsis' Github profile and no-one else had ever had access to it. We've started some work to improve the OAuth sign up process.
robertfall 3y ago
Hi, I'm on call for the team this week. We'd love to get more information here as we take anything around privacy and authentication very seriously. I'd like to get usernames of profiles involved and rule out being redirected back to a page you were visiting before signing in. Would you be open to discussing further? You can reach me at robert.herbst@flux.ai. Being able to discuss with you directly would be really helpful. Alternatively we actively monitor and respond to bug reports filed here: https://feedback.flux.ai/bugreports https://feedback.flux.ai/bugreports

Archit3ch 3y ago

Ah, yes, "confident" and "wrong" is exactly the combination I need when designing with lethal voltages. /s