ChatGPT is a new artificial intelligence technology-driven natural language processing tool launched by OpenAI, an American artificial intelligence research laboratory. ChatGPT is not only a chat robot, but also can perform tasks such as writing emails, video scripts, copywriting, translation, code, etc. The emergence of ChatGPT has also brought a great impact on the PCB industry. It has greatly increased the amount of PCB used and brought great development opportunities for the PCB industry. Some PCB engineers are thinking, can ChatGPT be used for PCB design?
Can ChatGPT be used for PCB design?
PCB design is a simple but complex process, perhaps AI can help in layout, wiring, problem inspection, etc. However, it is even more difficult to complete the whole process tasks such as device selection, schematic design, packaging and library building, and simulation testing only with the power of AI. In PCB design, AI is still a few tricks behind experienced PCB designers. For now it’s just a helper tool.
Can ChatGPT replace PCB design engineers?
To become a better PCB design engineer, one needs to master many skills and knowledge. The following are some of the important ones:
1. Education and training
PCB designers should have solid engineering or technical training and education background, which is essential for a good starting point.
2. Industry experience
PCB designers with more experience are often more favored and can get more opportunities to be hired.
3.Tool proficiency
As a designer, if you can master multiple PCB design tools at the same time, you must be very competitive in the market. Because you never know when your future company might decide which tool to use, or which set of tools to replace, and it might be a management decision.
4.Process knowledge
For a PCB designer, the more you know about the process of PCB design, manufacturing and assembly, the better. It is very important to make a better design and meet manufacturability requirements.
5. Professionalism
Good professionalism should be the quality that PCB engineers should have and pursue throughout their lives.
So can ChatGPT replace PCB design engineers?
Today, ChatGPT is exploding, and a large number of computing power layers require a large number of PCBs, which may lead to the great development of the PCB industry chain, and PCB designers are in high demand. AI starts to rely on PCB design. However, ChatGPT also cannot complete the work of designing the PCB by itself. Therefore, at present, ChatGPT cannot replace PCB design engineers.
However, with the emergence of ChatGPT, the AI promoter, in addition to the professionalism mentioned above, it may be easy to master or surpass the skills and knowledge that a PCB designer can only master for a long time.
ChatGPT’s monthly active users reached 100 million in January, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. However, ChatGPT’s frequent downtime due to the surge in users recently reflects ChatGPT’s high dependence on the computing power layer.
Brokerage analysts pointed out that the characteristics of the ChatGPT large model have brought about a sharp increase in computing power requirements. The GPT3 model alone requires thousands of A100 chips for over a month of training time, including 175 billion parameters and 45TB of data. As the carrier of computing power and transmission hardware, servers and switches will greatly increase the consumption of components such as PCBs and connectors.
For us, all this is not so difficult, for ChatGPT it may be a matter of time to do PCB layout design by itself. In the future, the PCB may be designed by AI itself for its own evolution, or ChatGPT will directly find another way to completely eliminate the PCB? In the long run, ChatGPT may replace the work of PCB designers.
Conclusion
However, no matter what the future holds, we should improve our skills and cultivate our own skills, so that we will not be eliminated by AI in the future when technology continues to develop!
