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EEVblog 1535 - DeepPCB AI AutoRouting TESTED!

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EEVblog:
Is the AI Machine Learning based DeepPCB autorouter better than Dave at routing a simple double sided PCB? Let's try it! TLDR; It sucks.

golden_labels:
The beauty of buzzwords. Terms devoid of meaning so much, that you can call anything “AI” or “deep”! After all the user can’t verify it.

My initial guess was, that this is just a “traditional” autorouter. But it seems the company does some research in machine learning, which suggests that the router may contain this technology. The questions remain: how much of it? How it is used? Does it even have any real impact on the solutions?

From the video two things may be guessed. Some kind of a recursive optimization approach is used. The program clearly has some initial guesses and tries to make them better, quickly getting trapped in a local extremum. This doesn’t leave much space for ML algorithms. Secondly, the model it uses is based on 2-dimensional cartesian planes, not a graph describing the solution. This is a much weaker guess, but the number of weirdly shaped traces seems way too big for the latter.

Which is sad, because it’s just “throw a smortnet against the wall and see if it sticks”. Instead of trying to solve the problem using the most appropriate mathematical abstraction and using ML to improve or avoid the hardest steps. :(

thinkfat:
So, they have not progressed in all since I tested them last time. I had better results using "Freerouting", and almost usable results after setting up cost functions, net classes and proper constraints.

Psi:
I feel pretty confident that a good auto-router should be possible with current AI technology.
There's probably just no-one willing to put in 10 million to develop it.

But with ChatGPT/OpenAI now a thing it's probably that building a good auto-router AI is much cheaper now.

thinkfat:

--- Quote from: Psi on March 29, 2023, 06:38:32 am ---I feel pretty confident that a good auto-router should be possible with current AI technology.
There's probably just no-one willing to put in 10 billion to develop it.

But with ChatGPT/OpenAI now a thing it's probably that building a good auto-router AI is much cheaper now.

--- End quote ---

Nah, come on. The price tag on an AI autorouter is not 10 billion ;)

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