Author Topic: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?  (Read 5267 times)

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Offline MT

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #25 on: July 13, 2022, 05:27:45 pm »
In a solar system not far from you a planet filled with scientific fraudsters:
Google placed senior software engineer Blake Lemoine on leave after he went public with his belief that the company's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot LaMDA was a self-aware person.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/

https://www.reuters.com/technology/its-alive-how-belief-ai-sentience-is-becoming-problem-2022-06-30/

Its alive, its alive, now i now how it feels to be a scientific lunatic! Criticizing Me Is Criticizing Science ;- Dr Fausti.



meh... another fad based on clown (cloud) computing.
This nothing more than assembling kits based off demoboards. This is NOT board design. as for intelligence ? most 8 year olds can do better
Watch this as they show absolute crap schematics built using their 'blocks' (featherwing here, other hobby crap there)  and then 'route'
(it's more like somebody regurgitating a plate of squid pasta and then throwing a firecracker in it and take a picture of what stuck to the wall)



That Karim Beguir is deep in with vaccine maker BioNTech and German railway Deutsche Bahn etc, so what could possibly go wrong.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2022, 06:28:25 pm by MT »
 

Offline thm_w

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #26 on: July 13, 2022, 07:59:05 pm »
Idiotic spin.
PCB design today is 5% of design effort and has very little to do with engineering. It's more in the Draftsman trade.
You've probably never seen a real pcb.
Try a modern motherboard. or a high power inverter with embedded transformers. Maybe something with all kinds of controlled impedance, signal integrity, looptime compensation , 8 layers, embeddded heat medallions, embedded wires , stacked / dogboned laservias / vippo / elic ? something that has 0.5mm BGA's and 1000 ampere running through it and 800 volts busbars. Then you will understand how much engineering goes in the board. Without that engineering your nice schematic is SNOT. if the layout is not done properly , at switch-on time you'll end up with a smoldering crater where once was your lab bench.
The time where draftsmen made single layer hand taped stuff for through hole parts is over.
So, why are only 5% of the engineers doing PCB layout in a typical design centre?

The statement was PCB design is 5% design effort.
The number of engineers doing PCB layout is completely unrelated to that number.

If we were talking about TOTAL design hours or effort for a project, then there would be some relevance.
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Online coppice

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #27 on: July 14, 2022, 02:11:43 am »
The statement was PCB design is 5% design effort.
The number of engineers doing PCB layout is completely unrelated to that number.

If we were talking about TOTAL design hours or effort for a project, then there would be some relevance.
So, you are claiming that 5% of the effort is not 5% of the man hours? You've lost me.
 

Offline nigelwright7557

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #28 on: July 14, 2022, 02:36:29 am »
I wrote my own pcb design software.
I found a good way to minimise size was using a "swap autoplacer" which swaps 2 components at a time if doing so shortens net.
Its a little smart in that you can make components none movable if you want.
It result in about 2-5% better autoroute results.

Auto pcb design:
To route a pcb some parts need to be in fixed positions so the operator would need to set these.
Some pcb's require star grounding on some nets so these would need to be high lighted.
On audio pcb's mains and mains transformers need to be away from high impedance audio.
On audio some paths need to be minimal length so these would need to be highlighted.
A good pcbcad man shouldnt be underestimated.

 

Offline ConKbot

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #29 on: July 14, 2022, 08:15:36 am »
Freebie for the startups that are actually interested in doing more than collecting investor cash. ML driven PDN optimizing. Would be something applicable to ML, actually useful, and not a pie in the sky wankfest. X ASIC pins are defined as power, need <y milliohm upto n GHz impedance for them, and z transient response. Let it pick though a library of caps with parasitics modeled, then place and stitch them to power planes, and then optimize for lowest space, lowest cost, flattest response across all the pins, or whatever other metric.
 
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Offline free_electron

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #30 on: July 14, 2022, 01:52:10 pm »
Freebie for the startups that are actually interested in doing more than collecting investor cash. ML driven PDN optimizing. Would be something applicable to ML, actually useful, and not a pie in the sky wankfest. X ASIC pins are defined as power, need <y milliohm upto n GHz impedance for them, and z transient response. Let it pick though a library of caps with parasitics modeled, then place and stitch them to power planes, and then optimize for lowest space, lowest cost, flattest response across all the pins, or whatever other metric.
that could be interesting. especially resonance points. the problem is the capacitor data. every manufacturer has a different approach.
Murata and others already has free tools to do this. but you need to pick manually. if that could be automated. then again ... not sure you need an AI , can be done with simple loops. the computer speed we have now could try all combinations in a few seconds.
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Offline Someone

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #31 on: July 14, 2022, 02:58:56 pm »
ML driven PDN optimizing. Would be something applicable to ML, actually useful, and not a pie in the sky wankfest. X ASIC pins are defined as power, need <y milliohm upto n GHz impedance for them, and z transient response. Let it pick though a library of caps with parasitics modeled, then place and stitch them to power planes, and then optimize for lowest space, lowest cost, flattest response across all the pins, or whatever other metric.
... not sure you need an AI , can be done with simple loops. the computer speed we have now could try all combinations in a few seconds.
lol, you talk big about how PCB design is complex and uses field solvers so it’s not just heuristics and untangling….  but forget? PDN design/tuning is intimately tied to layout and PCB routing + stackup.

So we’ll take you down a peg and remind you that Engineers (your choice of distinction) do the work, and PCB is mostly accumulation of grunt work with little engineering when viewed even from your perspective.

Lots of PCB design time is a human doing untangling, shifting things around so it all fits. Computers will keep taking more of that work.

I’ll get back to damping planes by moving parts and shuffling copper to balance IR drops since the “PCB drafters” are a) not able to recognise the issues, and b) don’t have visibility on the requirements.

That last point is the bottleneck/impedance mismatch with designing PCBs. Many many many competing criteria, and trying to communicate the full set of requirements. When for most decisions in layout 99.9% of the list of requirements don’t apply, and on a multi person layout most of the workers won’t even need to know most of the requirements.

App notes or reference designs often err on the side of caution/conservative design so it can be blindly reused without thinking required. Dig a little deeper and all of a sudden half the decoupling capacitance disappears, and all those keep-out/unbroken-plane directives can be filled with (non aggressor) curcuitry. Time vs money, but some things can carry the investment. That is not buying more PCB layout/drafting but better input/instruction for them.
 

Offline thm_w

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #32 on: July 14, 2022, 08:32:12 pm »
The statement was PCB design is 5% design effort.
The number of engineers doing PCB layout is completely unrelated to that number.

If we were talking about TOTAL design hours or effort for a project, then there would be some relevance.
So, you are claiming that 5% of the effort is not 5% of the man hours? You've lost me.

Yeah you are right I clearly misread.
If we are talking about total project effort, including software, I can see around 5% generally. Although that doesn't mean the work is any easier or harder, its just a portion of the task.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #33 on: July 14, 2022, 09:27:27 pm »
ML driven PDN optimizing. Would be something applicable to ML, actually useful, and not a pie in the sky wankfest. X ASIC pins are defined as power, need <y milliohm upto n GHz impedance for them, and z transient response. Let it pick though a library of caps with parasitics modeled, then place and stitch them to power planes, and then optimize for lowest space, lowest cost, flattest response across all the pins, or whatever other metric.
... not sure you need an AI , can be done with simple loops. the computer speed we have now could try all combinations in a few seconds.
lol, you talk big about how PCB design is complex and uses field solvers so it’s not just heuristics and untangling….  but forget? PDN design/tuning is intimately tied to layout and PCB routing + stackup.

So we’ll take you down a peg and remind you that Engineers (your choice of distinction) do the work, and PCB is mostly accumulation of grunt work with little engineering when viewed even from your perspective.

Lots of PCB design time is a human doing untangling, shifting things around so it all fits. Computers will keep taking more of that work.

I’ll get back to damping planes by moving parts and shuffling copper to balance IR drops since the “PCB drafters” are a) not able to recognise the issues, and b) don’t have visibility on the requirements.

That last point is the bottleneck/impedance mismatch with designing PCBs. Many many many competing criteria, and trying to communicate the full set of requirements. When for most decisions in layout 99.9% of the list of requirements don’t apply, and on a multi person layout most of the workers won’t even need to know most of the requirements.

App notes or reference designs often err on the side of caution/conservative design so it can be blindly reused without thinking required. Dig a little deeper and all of a sudden half the decoupling capacitance disappears, and all those keep-out/unbroken-plane directives can be filled with (non aggressor) curcuitry. Time vs money, but some things can carry the investment. That is not buying more PCB layout/drafting but better input/instruction for them.
i'm talking finding the best combination of caps . once you know what and how much , the combinations can be looped very quickly. PDN analysis software has existed for a long time. no AI needed. You do a proper placement (so the board is not swiss cheese), see where you land , and then go tune the caps (if needed). The models now are good enough. 20 years ago you had to sit in the lab with a network analyser . Now the capacitor makers have accurate models.
Any serious board designer does that. The time of menial line drawing is over. You work with the people responsible for the design to tune those things.
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Offline Someone

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #34 on: July 14, 2022, 11:11:34 pm »
The models now are good enough. 20 years ago you had to sit in the lab with a network analyser . Now the capacitor makers have accurate models. Any serious board designer does that.
Yes, the models are now more accurate than ever and simulation can get accurate enough to dispense with the network analyser in most cases. Do I see PCB teams doing that work? Never have, that was left for separate PDN specialist(s) who weren't doing PCB layout as their day-to-day tasks. Very few individuals end up at that level of detail.

ML driven PDN optimizing. Would be something applicable to ML, actually useful, and not a pie in the sky wankfest. X ASIC pins are defined as power, need <y milliohm upto n GHz impedance for them, and z transient response. Let it pick though a library of caps with parasitics modeled, then place and stitch them to power planes, and then optimize for lowest space, lowest cost, flattest response across all the pins, or whatever other metric.
... not sure you need an AI , can be done with simple loops. the computer speed we have now could try all combinations in a few seconds.
lol, you talk big about how PCB design is complex and uses field solvers so it’s not just heuristics and untangling….  but forget? PDN design/tuning is intimately tied to layout and PCB routing + stackup.
i'm talking finding the best combination of caps . once you know what and how much , the combinations can be looped very quickly. PDN analysis software has existed for a long time. no AI needed. You do a proper placement (so the board is not swiss cheese), see where you land , and then go tune the caps (if needed).
Unless you disregard the plane (then why use a field solver you proudly pointed to in your box of tools?) the minimum combination/sizes of capacitors changes with their layout/positioning on the plane(s), they can be optimized for a given layout rather than a pessimistic solution that works for any reasonable plane/layout. Shifting a few caps 10mm or so around can make big differences, and it's those incremental optimisations that are amenable to automation.

Take a "typical" SoC/FPGA/ASIC rail with 40-50 capacitors on it, and a selection of a dozen or so caps stocked (and always loaded on the pick and place), that's 50^12 >= 200e18 combinations, not a problem that can be solved "quickly" by brute force.

You're talking big but the few of us who actually know this stuff see right through the bluster, or perhaps continue and embarrass yourself further?
« Last Edit: July 15, 2022, 03:29:07 am by Someone »
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #35 on: July 15, 2022, 03:08:25 am »
Idiotic spin.
PCB design today is 5% of design effort and has very little to do with engineering. It's more in the Draftsman trade.

90% perspiration, 5% inspiration and 5% terror :-DD.

Actually you are way off the mark. Try designing transmission lines or antennas for 1.6GHz or 2.4GHz. Or creating a detection circuit using op-amp filters. Or mitigating ESD in a medical device. In those cases, it is mostly engineering design. Good schematic design and PCB layout is an art. I was recently contracted to review a schematic and layout recently and I found around 100 issues, including fatal design flaws. And they wondered why their board was not working. They then asked me to reconstruct the schematic from scratch because the old one was such a unreadable cluttered mess full of inconsistencies and errors. It is done and I will be laying out the board soon.

Another aspect of good engineering design is component selection. Currently, this is extremely difficult in many cases due to the global chip shortage. As a result we have to often get creative with schematic design and PCB layout. It is not easy.

By the way, well-designed processes, documentation and design standards are a segue into good PCB design.
 
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Offline jonpaul

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #36 on: July 15, 2022, 04:43:10 pm »
AI PCB:

Compliance for EMI, safety?

Create PCB footprints from part or drawing?

EE design: The thread seems limited to PCB layout. A product desgin may use:

Panel layout

Analog and digital Circuit design

Magnetics design

EMI filters

Transient protection

RF design

etc.

Jon
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Offline Zucca

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Re: The End of Electrical Engineering Design?
« Reply #37 on: July 15, 2022, 04:49:35 pm »
This is bullshit.

Creating a well done PCB is a human skill superior to any art, job and service.
It is almost a religion to embrace.

To me it is one of the pinnacle of human engineering.
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