Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) today released the groundbreaking keynote presentation from PCB West 2024, “AI Roadmap for PCB Layout: New Opportunities for PCB Designers.”
Presented by electronics computer-aided design software (ECAD) architect Charles Pfeil, the roadmap highlights current limitations of artificial intelligence and necessary steps to address them to overcome these challenges. It illustrates the capabilities and methodologies that will be needed for AI success with complex PCB designs, with a focus on constraints, place and route.
The talk was designed to inspire collaboration among EDA companies, customers and designers to create AI capabilities that solve complex PCB layouts. Success, Pfeil says, lies in balancing the growing capabilities of AI with the preservation of proprietary design knowledge and methodologies.
The pdf may be downloaded at no charge at Printed Circuit University under the White Papers section (www.printedcircuituniversity.com).
“AI functionality for effective place and route of simple designs is currently available; however, using AI for place and route of complex designs is still in the first stages. But the ultimate goal of AI-driven PCB design tools is to replicate and potentially surpass the capabilities of experienced human designers, particularly for complex designs,” Pfeil notes.
“Communicating PCB design expertise and decisions to an AI program involves several steps, including knowledge extraction, representation, and the development of an appropriate system to leverage this knowledge. But significant challenges remain, particularly in capturing and applying the nuanced expertise of experienced designers and the unique methodologies of different companies.”
Over his 50-year career in the PCB industry, Pfeil has been a designer, owner of a service bureau, and had engineering management and product definition roles at Racal-Redac, ASI, Cadence, PADS, VeriBest, Mentor Graphics, and Altium. Most of his career was at Mentor Graphics, where he was a software architect focused on the advanced development of PCB design tools. He was the original product architect of Expedition PCB, and an inventor of Team PCB, XtremePCB, XtremeAR, and the Sketch Router. He is also the author of BGA Breakouts and Routing and High-Speed Constraint Values and PCB Layout Methods.
About Printed Circuit Engineering Association, Inc.®
Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA)® (pcea.net) is a nonprofit association that promotes printed circuit engineering as a profession and encourages, facilitates, and promotes the exchange of information and integration of new design concepts through communications, seminars, workshops, and professional certification through a network of local and regional PCEA-affiliated groups. PCEA serves the global PCB community through print, digital and online products, as well as live and virtual events. PCEA publishes PRINTED CIRCUIT DESIGN & FAB (pcdandf.com) and CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY (circuitsassembly.com), as well as the PCB UPdate (pcbupdate.com) e-newsletter. PCEA also produces the PRINTED CIRCUIT UNIVERSITY (printedcircuituniversity.com) online training platform, and trade shows and conferences, including PCB East (pcbeast.com), PCB West (pcbwest.com), PCB2Day workshop series, and PCEA Training (pceatraining.net), the industry leading training and certification program.
