[megous]

What's special about it, other than more constraints, more things to take into account, and having to simulate/test more - so the need for some specialized SW?

They are different constraints than the ones in SW development, but is there some fundamental difference that prevents replacing the human in the loop with AI in the loop?

[nerdsniper]

Experienced humans can do basic high speed layout without expensive simulation using rules of thumb that worked for them in the past. It’ll be overconstrained and overbuilt, but it will work.

I’m curious if AI’s know enough to do some useful high frequency / data rate layouts without paying for $50,000+ simulation tools.

[megous]

You can certainly make it produce a lot of design rules of thumb. You can make it do the research for each of those based on the literature. And you can then make the machine sort out the rules of thumb by effect and quantify them meaningfully.

Then you can make it process existing good designs and make it propose a general design/routing methodology (and it's own scripts/tools for calculating/optimizing the "thumb" rules that would be used throughout) for initial placement/routing of key components based on all the collected data.

Then you may have enough context and tools to have it make use of them during design.

[nerdsniper]

Right. Okay - so you have no idea if it does or not. Thank you.

[megous]

I actually tried a few of the steps, but whatever.