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

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

SequoiaHope 1mo ago
Electrical engineering will involve humans making specifications for a while the same way we do vibe software engineering today. Board design and layout will change but electrical engineering is about more than that. For tools, I think the LLMs will outpace companies who built specialized tooling for this over the last couple years. Every six months we will see more progress than we saw in the last few years - for quite some time.
- conductr 1mo ago
  The barrier for me as a hobbyist is always learning the tools. Same for game design. Text is a better interface than learning CAD, KiCAD, Blender, etc. None of those things feel user friendly to people that don’t want to make a career out of it. To the point I usually just jump on fivver and hire someone to do a pair design session. Problem with that is cost sometimes, but also the difficulty of mobilization (find someone, agree on price, align calendars) and also the difficulty of changes because you have mobilize again to some degree, if some time goes by you may not even be able to reach the person. I also find it difficult when I want to do something unusual or non-standard. I usually know what standard is, and have decided I like something else instead, and I don’t really like a human critic of the decision when they don’t understand my reasoning. I find this happens in nearly all design; architects, engineers, etc. I welcome this opportunity to pivot to a process I can control a bit more without having to really learn the tools.
  - SequoiaHope 1mo ago
    Ya that makes sense. I will say tho that for things like mechanical CAD, text is extremely limiting. But yeah the learning curve is real and you can’t learn it all. I’ve started trying a bit of LLM assisted mechanical design, but I am basically too skilled there to accept what it is doing. I want to keep trying tho, I like learning how these things can work. And yeah I always imagined hiring a PCB designer to help but it always seemed like a lot. To have a reliable tool I can use any time I want is wonderful.
- a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
  So, basically, in a few years, humans say what spectrum a device may operate in, AI figures out how to make it, and humans check that AI didn't fuck up? Given, say, 4 more years (ie, same as time from initial ChatGPT to today), what level of spec do you think humans will be giving?
  - SequoiaHope 1mo ago
    Yes I think generative board design will become better packaged, trained, and validated, and that it will be common place for electrical engineers to rely more on these tools. Major vendors like Altium will add tools like this and their use will become commonplace in industry. For hobbyists, you will be able to specify a board design in natural language and have it completed with unprecedented ease. I’m excited to help my raver friends make wearable glowie things. I find it hard to predict what technology will be like in four years, but the next major leap for these tools will be higher level system specification and integrated design. What you want is not a circuit board what you want is a product. The tools will bring multiple functions together and fully integrated iterative design will accelerate development. Despite the many problems with the AI roll out I am fundamentally excited for tools which can accelerate our engineering development. We will build things much faster in 4 years than today. One year of progress will in some instances take one week. I am particularly interested in how this might begin to accelerate change in heavy industry. With hope it will help us build fusion power reactors and high speed electric trains. I hope we find the courage to support every person who for one reason or another does not ride this wave. We will have so much more to share, or to hoard.
    - a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
      Yeah. I'm expecting that we fully automate cognition in the medium to long run. I think it's inevitable. With the advances in math, I'm also hoping we can automate fundamental physics. Just ask for the physics needed for better fusion, no need for human toil. If we play this right, the AI can fully take care of all our needs, and reaping the rewards of what it does when we stop being able to keep up with the rate of automated discoveries. Hopefully it's able to dumb down enough knowledge to keep entertained people who decide to learn after learning stops being a requirement for human advancement.
- oscillonoscope 1mo ago
  I've been playing in this space as a hobby for a while. I agree the current round of startups are dead ends but I doubt LLMs will be good enough without drastically different tooling than today (ECAD and ATE). I've been playing around on a DSL for schematic capture alongside the design contract and it works for most subcircuits quite naturally. From that you can deterministically create a set of simulations and hardware tests to validate everything.
3dB 1mo ago
The verification problem for hardware is a couple of orders of magnitude harder than it is for software because there often (usually) is no 'right' solution. There is a balance of tradeoffs governed by several information sources including standards, company policies, design trade offs and engineer preferences. Software style 'Lint checks' will exist for basic things like functional correctness - e.g. verifying net connectivity. But many verifications for things like EMC, EMI, SI, PI and thermal require engineering judgement to balance tradeoffs. We're building a verification loop for hardware at Engentica, with a focus initially on EMC/EMI, and I do think the problem is solvable. But it requires a harness with lots of built in solvers for the hardware vertical, and I don't think it's something that LLMs will crack on their own. As engineers adopt AI to help build circuits more and more, I think hybrid AI/deterministic verification will only get more important.
- BatFastard 28d ago
  And software engineers have a right solution? Guess again.

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

SequoiaHope 1mo ago

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

conductr 1mo ago
The barrier for me as a hobbyist is always learning the tools. Same for game design. Text is a better interface than learning CAD, KiCAD, Blender, etc. None of those things feel user friendly to people that don’t want to make a career out of it. To the point I usually just jump on fivver and hire someone to do a pair design session. Problem with that is cost sometimes, but also the difficulty of mobilization (find someone, agree on price, align calendars) and also the difficulty of changes because you have mobilize again to some degree, if some time goes by you may not even be able to reach the person. I also find it difficult when I want to do something unusual or non-standard. I usually know what standard is, and have decided I like something else instead, and I don’t really like a human critic of the decision when they don’t understand my reasoning. I find this happens in nearly all design; architects, engineers, etc. I welcome this opportunity to pivot to a process I can control a bit more without having to really learn the tools.
- SequoiaHope 1mo ago
  Ya that makes sense. I will say tho that for things like mechanical CAD, text is extremely limiting. But yeah the learning curve is real and you can’t learn it all. I’ve started trying a bit of LLM assisted mechanical design, but I am basically too skilled there to accept what it is doing. I want to keep trying tho, I like learning how these things can work. And yeah I always imagined hiring a PCB designer to help but it always seemed like a lot. To have a reliable tool I can use any time I want is wonderful.
a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
So, basically, in a few years, humans say what spectrum a device may operate in, AI figures out how to make it, and humans check that AI didn't fuck up? Given, say, 4 more years (ie, same as time from initial ChatGPT to today), what level of spec do you think humans will be giving?
- SequoiaHope 1mo ago
  Yes I think generative board design will become better packaged, trained, and validated, and that it will be common place for electrical engineers to rely more on these tools. Major vendors like Altium will add tools like this and their use will become commonplace in industry. For hobbyists, you will be able to specify a board design in natural language and have it completed with unprecedented ease. I’m excited to help my raver friends make wearable glowie things. I find it hard to predict what technology will be like in four years, but the next major leap for these tools will be higher level system specification and integrated design. What you want is not a circuit board what you want is a product. The tools will bring multiple functions together and fully integrated iterative design will accelerate development. Despite the many problems with the AI roll out I am fundamentally excited for tools which can accelerate our engineering development. We will build things much faster in 4 years than today. One year of progress will in some instances take one week. I am particularly interested in how this might begin to accelerate change in heavy industry. With hope it will help us build fusion power reactors and high speed electric trains. I hope we find the courage to support every person who for one reason or another does not ride this wave. We will have so much more to share, or to hoard.
  - a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
    Yeah. I'm expecting that we fully automate cognition in the medium to long run. I think it's inevitable. With the advances in math, I'm also hoping we can automate fundamental physics. Just ask for the physics needed for better fusion, no need for human toil. If we play this right, the AI can fully take care of all our needs, and reaping the rewards of what it does when we stop being able to keep up with the rate of automated discoveries. Hopefully it's able to dumb down enough knowledge to keep entertained people who decide to learn after learning stops being a requirement for human advancement.
oscillonoscope 1mo ago
I've been playing in this space as a hobby for a while. I agree the current round of startups are dead ends but I doubt LLMs will be good enough without drastically different tooling than today (ECAD and ATE). I've been playing around on a DSL for schematic capture alongside the design contract and it works for most subcircuits quite naturally. From that you can deterministically create a set of simulations and hardware tests to validate everything.

3dB 1mo ago

The verification problem for hardware is a couple of orders of magnitude harder than it is for software because there often (usually) is no 'right' solution. There is a balance of tradeoffs governed by several information sources including standards, company policies, design trade offs and engineer preferences. Software style 'Lint checks' will exist for basic things like functional correctness - e.g. verifying net connectivity. But many verifications for things like EMC, EMI, SI, PI and thermal require engineering judgement to balance tradeoffs. We're building a verification loop for hardware at Engentica, with a focus initially on EMC/EMI, and I do think the problem is solvable. But it requires a harness with lots of built in solvers for the hardware vertical, and I don't think it's something that LLMs will crack on their own. As engineers adopt AI to help build circuits more and more, I think hybrid AI/deterministic verification will only get more important.

BatFastard 28d ago
And software engineers have a right solution? Guess again.