3 ms·

AFAICT the tool routed the PCB from an existing schematic. It did not "design" the computer. NXP publishes full schematics and CAD files for this platform,

AFAICT the tool routed the PCB from an existing schematic. It did not "design" the computer. NXP publishes full schematics and CAD files for this platform, originally designed in Cadence Allegro. Our goal was to keep the schematic identical and prove out only the layout portion with Quilter. That gave us a clear baseline: if the board didn't work, it would be due to our layout. Source: https://www.quilter.ai/blog/preparing-an-ai-designed-computer https://www.quilter.ai/blog/preparing-an-ai-designed-compute...

simcop2387 10mo ago
Pretty reasonable place to start. I'm curious how it would fare in an emc/rf test.
- dlcarrier 10mo ago
  It is a reasonable place to start. So much so that autorouters have been around for practically as long as computers have, and they've been better at it than people for most of that time. The only reason people usually route PCBs is that defining the constraints for an autorouter is generally more work than just manually routing a small PCB, but within semiconductors autorouting overtook manual routing decades ago.
  - webdevver 10mo ago
    it is surprising (or not?) that there is such a vast gulf in terms of automated tooling between the semiconductor world and pcb routing world. i guess maybe there are less degrees of freedom and more 'regularity' in the semiconductor space? sort of like a fish swimming in an amorphous ocean vs. having to navigate uneven terrain with legs and feet. the fish in some sense is operating in a much more 'elegant' space, and that is reflected in the (beautiful?) simplicity of fish vs. all the weird 'nonlinear' appendages sticking out of terrestrial animals - the guys who walk are facing a more complicated problem space. i guess with pcbs you have 'weird' or annoying constraints like package dimensions, via size, hole size, trace thickness, limited layer count, etc.
    - rasz 10mo ago
      Semi by hand got out of hand (HA!) in the nineties. There is simply too much work for humans (millions of transistors) so we swallow performance hit. Synthesis puts stuff together from human optimized basic building blocks. Same reason FPGA tools quickly advanced from schematic input to hardware description languages. With PCB its all still quite manageable, even something like whole PC motherboard is easily doable by two-three EEs specializing in different niches (power, thermals, high speed digital design).
    - dlcarrier 10mo ago
      It's the opposite; semiconductor design is so full of constraints that it's difficult to do manually. Usually individual transistors and gates are laid out manually, then manufactured in a test chip, and empirically analyzed in every way possible, then those measurements are fed into the router, and it creates a layout of those blocks that allows enough signal propagation to work at the high speeds used in modern semiconductors.
K0balt 10mo ago
In my experience, if you are trying to make a quality product in a complex space, it takes as long to fix autorouted stuff as it does to do it yourself (with some exceptions). I have no doubt that the autorouted stuff will work… but it won’t be as robust . Aging, thermal cycling, signal emissions, signal corruption, reliability, testability, failure dynamics, and a hundred other manufacturing, maintenance, usability, and reliability profiles are subtly affected by placement and layout that one learns to intuit over the years. I’m not saying that AI can’t capture that eventually, but I am saying that just following simple heuristics and ensuring DRC compliance only gets you 80 percent of the way there. There is as much work in getting the next 15 percent as there was in the first 80, and often requires a clean slate if the subtleties weren’t properly anticipated in the first pass. The same stands for the next 4 percent. The last 1 percent is a unicorn. You’re always left with avoidable compromises. For simple stuff where there is plenty of room, you can get great results with automation. For complex and dense elements, automation is very useful but is a tool wielded with caution in the context of a carefully considered strategy in emc, thermal, and signal integrity trade offs. When ther is strong cost pressure it adds a confounding element at every step as well. In short, yes, it will boot. No, it will not be as performant when longevity, speed, cost, and reliability is exhaustively characterized. Eventually it may be possible to use AI to produce an equivalent product, but until we have an exhaustive training set of “golden boards” and their schematics to use as a training set, it will continue to require significant human intervention. Unfortunately, well routed, complex boards are typically coveted and carefully guarded IP, and most of the the stuff that is significantly complex yet freely and openly available in the wild is still in the first 80percent, if even. The majority of circuit boards in the wild are either sub-optimally engineered or are under so much cost pressure that everything else is bent to fit that lens. Neither one of those categories make good training data, even if you could get the gerbers.

simcop2387 10mo ago

Pretty reasonable place to start. I'm curious how it would fare in an emc/rf test.

dlcarrier 10mo ago
It is a reasonable place to start. So much so that autorouters have been around for practically as long as computers have, and they've been better at it than people for most of that time. The only reason people usually route PCBs is that defining the constraints for an autorouter is generally more work than just manually routing a small PCB, but within semiconductors autorouting overtook manual routing decades ago.
- webdevver 10mo ago
  it is surprising (or not?) that there is such a vast gulf in terms of automated tooling between the semiconductor world and pcb routing world. i guess maybe there are less degrees of freedom and more 'regularity' in the semiconductor space? sort of like a fish swimming in an amorphous ocean vs. having to navigate uneven terrain with legs and feet. the fish in some sense is operating in a much more 'elegant' space, and that is reflected in the (beautiful?) simplicity of fish vs. all the weird 'nonlinear' appendages sticking out of terrestrial animals - the guys who walk are facing a more complicated problem space. i guess with pcbs you have 'weird' or annoying constraints like package dimensions, via size, hole size, trace thickness, limited layer count, etc.
  - rasz 10mo ago
    Semi by hand got out of hand (HA!) in the nineties. There is simply too much work for humans (millions of transistors) so we swallow performance hit. Synthesis puts stuff together from human optimized basic building blocks. Same reason FPGA tools quickly advanced from schematic input to hardware description languages. With PCB its all still quite manageable, even something like whole PC motherboard is easily doable by two-three EEs specializing in different niches (power, thermals, high speed digital design).
  - dlcarrier 10mo ago
    It's the opposite; semiconductor design is so full of constraints that it's difficult to do manually. Usually individual transistors and gates are laid out manually, then manufactured in a test chip, and empirically analyzed in every way possible, then those measurements are fed into the router, and it creates a layout of those blocks that allows enough signal propagation to work at the high speeds used in modern semiconductors.

K0balt 10mo ago

In my experience, if you are trying to make a quality product in a complex space, it takes as long to fix autorouted stuff as it does to do it yourself (with some exceptions). I have no doubt that the autorouted stuff will work… but it won’t be as robust . Aging, thermal cycling, signal emissions, signal corruption, reliability, testability, failure dynamics, and a hundred other manufacturing, maintenance, usability, and reliability profiles are subtly affected by placement and layout that one learns to intuit over the years. I’m not saying that AI can’t capture that eventually, but I am saying that just following simple heuristics and ensuring DRC compliance only gets you 80 percent of the way there. There is as much work in getting the next 15 percent as there was in the first 80, and often requires a clean slate if the subtleties weren’t properly anticipated in the first pass. The same stands for the next 4 percent. The last 1 percent is a unicorn. You’re always left with avoidable compromises. For simple stuff where there is plenty of room, you can get great results with automation. For complex and dense elements, automation is very useful but is a tool wielded with caution in the context of a carefully considered strategy in emc, thermal, and signal integrity trade offs. When ther is strong cost pressure it adds a confounding element at every step as well. In short, yes, it will boot. No, it will not be as performant when longevity, speed, cost, and reliability is exhaustively characterized. Eventually it may be possible to use AI to produce an equivalent product, but until we have an exhaustive training set of “golden boards” and their schematics to use as a training set, it will continue to require significant human intervention. Unfortunately, well routed, complex boards are typically coveted and carefully guarded IP, and most of the the stuff that is significantly complex yet freely and openly available in the wild is still in the first 80percent, if even. The majority of circuit boards in the wild are either sub-optimally engineered or are under so much cost pressure that everything else is bent to fit that lens. Neither one of those categories make good training data, even if you could get the gerbers.