Automating Circuit Board Design with Reinforcement Learning and Avoiding Unintended Behaviors

Episode 128

I spoke with Sergiy Nesterenko about:

* Developing an automated system for designing PCBs

* Difficulties in human and automated PCB design

* Building a startup at the intersection of different areas of expertise

By the way — I hit 40 ratings on Apple Podcasts (and am at 66 on Spotify). It’d mean a lot (really, a lot) if you’d consider leaving a rating or a review. I read everything, and it’s very heartening and helpful to hear what you think.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Sergiy is founder and CEO of Quilter. Sergiy spent 5 years at SpaceX developing radiation-hardened avionics for SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy's second stage rockets, before discovering a big problem: designing printed circuit boards for all the electronics in these rockets was tedious, manual and error prone. So in 2019, he founded Quilter to build the next generation of AI-powered tooling for electrical engineers.

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Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (00:45) Quilter origins and difficulties in designing PCBs

* (04:12) PCBs and schematic implementations

* (06:40) Iteration cycles and simulations

* (08:35) Octilinear traces and first-principles design for PCBs

* (12:38) The design space of PCBs

* (15:27) Benchmarks for PCB design

* (20:05) RL and PCB design

* (22:48) PCB details, track widths

* (25:09) Board functionality and aesthetics

* (27:53) PCB designers and automation

* (30:24) Quilter as a compiler

* (33:56) Gluing social worlds and bringing together expertise

* (36:00) Process knowledge vs. first-principles thinking

* (42:05) Example boards

* (44:45) Auto-routers for PCBs

* (48:43) Difficulties for scaling to larger boards

* (50:42) Customers and skepticism

* (53:42) On experiencing negative feedback

* (56:42) Maintaining stamina while building Quilter

* (1:00:00) Endgame for Quilter and future directions

* (1:03:24) Outro

Links:

* Quilter homepage

* Other pages/features mentioned:

* Thin-to-thick traces

* Octilinear trace routing

* Comment from Tom Fleet