napowderly

14 ms·

31.
by napowderly 3y ago
For sure, we found that to start with something useful from day 0 we needed to be able to completely represent any possible circuit. Starting by just providing a cleaner way to write out a netlist is just the beginning. We are working to ad
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by napowderly 3y ago
I have found taking a 'functional programming' like approach, where you build up your circuit from small blocks with specific functions that are easy to hold in your mind and then building up by combining those. For example instea
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by napowderly 3y ago
I am definitely curious for feedback from people after using it for a while. I felt the same in the beginning, but after writing a fair bit of it, I rarely find myself wanting it. I could imagine for more casual or new users it could be hel
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by napowderly 3y ago
For sure, its amazing how many places you need to write down basically the same information today. EDA tool, SPICE, requirements pages, documentation. SPICE is definitely an exciting one, particularly as the model can be versioned along wit
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by napowderly 3y ago
I was a designer at a big company in my last job. Many of my colleagues shared the sentiment that the tools were trash, I think people just need an exciting future to rally around. I think being able to link across disciplines is super exci
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by napowderly 3y ago
Worth adding, we have found much higher returns building tools to solve the problems that a visualizer would normally help you with in other ways. For example ERC checking and modular abstraction of circuits. Working at a 'block diagra
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by napowderly 3y ago
You might be right, dont think we will be tackling perf boards any time soon :D
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by napowderly 3y ago
For sure, would be awesome to have a chat some time!
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by napowderly 3y ago
Pretty similar in concept, a few important nuances that come with building boards in the real world. For example dealing with tolerances. The language is definitely an important part of this, but we think alot of the surrounding infrastruct
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by napowderly 3y ago
We have been working on an optimizer for solving components that we will put a post out about soon. But the gist is figuring out which constraints are expensive, for example a precision inductor might be quite expensive, but a precision res
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by napowderly 3y ago
I have used it, I think its great. I am excited to see whole products defined in code.
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by napowderly 3y ago
For sure the goal! Our current component tool will find components that are available on JLC, in stock and to your spec, no more looking for resistor part numbers. The layout side is going to be exciting, we are just scratching the surface
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by napowderly 3y ago
We have some basic component parameters that we can define, like value, dielectric and voltage rating for capacitors. I think these become much more powerful once we add in equations to help relate these values and link them together. For e
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by napowderly 3y ago
So would we! I think we are trying to do much the same things, make hardware design faster and more accessible.
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by napowderly 3y ago
I bet you do ;) We are fully opensource today, but we will eventually have some features we sell to enterprise. We have a small community of mostly friends at the moment, we are hoping to grow that very soon now that we have something we be
46.
by napowderly 3y ago
For sure, its a big benefit of using language, it is comparatively very fast and easy to define custom relationships of component values, trace widths etc that would quickly become untenable in a point and click tool. We think the path forw
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by napowderly 3y ago
Specifically on the layout section, I have been thinking along the lines of start with sensible 'seed' layouts that users will contribute, then mutate the layouts with a physics driven solver. Imagine links between components as a
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by napowderly 3y ago
We are taking the open-source route (eventually moving to open-core). We think a big part of moving the industry in this direction is building a community around it, much like the way Github started out.
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by napowderly 3y ago
Indeed, the ability to branch and merge is a pretty exciting concept for me as a hardware designer. Another simple one is building artifacts in CI and doing quality checks, I have make some silly manual errors that have been very expensive
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by napowderly 3y ago
Indeed, Altium has similar features also. I think what has been missing is an effective way to collaborate on hardware projects as a community and be able to share them like you would packages on pypi or npm.
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by napowderly 3y ago
I have noticed a huge improvement in ChatGPTs coding abilities having an interpreter to check its work. I expect we will be able to bring a similar feedback loop to hardware once we can integrate things like simulation and equations. Also h
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by napowderly 3y ago
For sure, we are starting with the schematic/requirements side of things and will push in the layout direction soon. We have started with some simple layout snippet reuse that is available today. My experience with autorouters is they
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by napowderly 3y ago
For sure, we definitely subscribe to works out of the box / path most taken. We have been working on adding equations to our language so we can solve component values based on requirements like output current and ripple for a regulator
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by napowderly 3y ago
We do have interfaces! They are super useful, I am very stoked that I dont have to remember which way around MISO/MOSI go any more. Interfaces are just a collection of signals eg interface I2C: signal sda signal scl sig