Show HN: Copperhead – Hardware as Fast as Software

Posted by animeshchouhan 3 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by mikeayles 2 hours ago

The space is definitely heating up.

Flux.ai being the incumbent Silixon based out of the UK have been showing demos Quilter and DeepPCB for layout The recent OpenAI demo...

I went the other way and pre-designed sub circuits with a set of rules that allows simple merge assembly, unfortunately I didn't have the time or budget to continue with it, but I took the constrained approach as with hardware, things can't be 99%.

The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy.

Any questions about the use of AI for any form of automation on forums/Reddit get shot down instantly and the OP's told 'skill issue' more or less. In my opinion, just as with software, most work is simple and should be automated, there will always be a need for the real engineering when it comes to high specification work, high volume optimisation and hardware debug (although Claude code is pretty handy at driving a Jlink)

Comment by Aurornis 1 hour ago

> The one thing I will say, is that my experience of hardware engineers is very gatekeepy.

Stay away from Reddit and forums if you want to see where the open minded people are looking. There are a lot of communities where EEs are experimenting with newer technologies and sharing their results, with realistic appraisals of what can be done.

You also need to understand the history of autorouting technology for PCBs. Autorouters with auto layout have been around in many forms for years. Their output never compares to a skilled EE doing it manually. The gap between autorouter output and skilled operator output is even bigger than the gap between a good developer and average AI codegen slop.

I’m interested in this space, but even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go for boards more complex than simple hobby boards.

I do think this is going to be good for hobby people doing simple PCBs though

Comment by stonogo 38 minutes ago

> Stay away from Reddit and forums if you want to see where the open minded people are looking. There are a lot of communities where EEs are experimenting with newer technologies and sharing their results, with realistic appraisals of what can be done.

Where are these communities?

Comment by Joel_Mckay 1 hour ago

NP-hard problems are still NP-hard even with magical LLM pixie sprinkles. =3

Comment by Aurornis 14 minutes ago

If the magic LLM pixie sprinkles can brute force their way to a solution using viable heuristics and their training data, I will use them.

Comment by officialchicken 26 minutes ago

Magical LLM pixie sprinkles ... is that where magic smoke comes from?

Comment by Joel_Mckay 7 minutes ago

Magic smoke is important, as it indicates a design parameter was exceeded.

I often recommend folks get a mini thermal camera for their phone... as inspecting for issues in electrical, hydraulic, or mechanical systems gets a fair bit easier/safer. =3

Comment by monocasa 1 hour ago

They're also NP-hard for the humans doing the majority of the work currently, meaning that good enough heuristics dominate as it is.

Comment by Joel_Mckay 59 minutes ago

Every trace on a PCB is a traveling salesman problem with ballooning complexity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

While physics informed models do exist, they are still going to burn a lot of compute to generate failure modes people didn't know were possible. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ

Comment by animeshchouhan 1 hour ago

[flagged]

Comment by jimberlage 2 hours ago

This is probably not the primary way people use the tool, but if I log in (desktop, Chrome on macOS), click "Start a board" on the sidebar, and go to click any of the inputs, I can't type text in them (the inputs are "Start from an example", "What are you building", and "The brief".

Comment by aitchnyu 1 hour ago

Why would somebody ever use a hosted version? I see "One-click gerber, DXF/STEP, render and BOM export" and "Altium support beyond KiCad" in cloud plans, dunno if they are compelling.

Comment by tylergetsay 2 hours ago

Can I take the output of this and get a fully assembled board mailed to me? Thats my dream...

Comment by seidleroni 1 hour ago

It seems like this is just controlling KiCad. Assuming this produces a BOM as well, you could take the output files, send them to a board house like PCBWay or JLPCB and get the boards stuffed and shipped to you.

The board houses may have questions for you that may be difficult for you to answer, but theoretically you could answer those with AI and get fully assembled boards delivered right to your doorstep.

Comment by animeshchouhan 1 hour ago

not quite. copperhead operates on its own hardware IR, compiles verified KiCad files and generates manufacturing outputs.

we're also building a design house around it to close the loop with fabs, handle DFM questions and eventually let you hit "order" and receive fully assembled boards!

Comment by animeshchouhan 1 hour ago

soon :)

Comment by danielmorozoff 2 hours ago

Has anyone had experience with Copperhead vs Astra and kicad? Looking for a similar tool soon

Comment by ajnin 2 hours ago

Copperhead directly edits the KiCad files so that is the CLI version of that Astra demo.

Comment by animeshchouhan 1 hour ago

not quite. copperhead operates on its own IR, which then compiles to KiCad files.

Comment by TechSquidTV 2 hours ago

This is what I want to know as well. I'm about to kick off a project or two.

Comment by animeshchouhan 2 hours ago

we're developing https://copperbench.org - an open-source benchmark for evaluating ai agents on real, verifiable hardware design tasks.

Comment by anirudhojhaanil 2 hours ago

With AI enabled consumer hardware usecases going to explode this is something super relevant. At least 5 startups have pitched their wearables to me and they could definitely use this

Comment by 1 hour ago

Comment by motoboi 2 hours ago

"hardware as fast as software". Please no, lol.

I've imagined a chip running as slow as python.

Comment by FacelessJim 2 hours ago

I’ve read it the same way. Definitely a double edged slogan.

Comment by animeshchouhan 39 minutes ago

haha nice catch but this is about development speed

Comment by Joel_Mckay 1 hour ago

LM555 or 300MB nodejs App on a $300 SoC... the choice is clear... lol =3

Comment by krttherealest 51 minutes ago

it would propably help thousands of ppl ngl

Comment by fwip 1 hour ago

Might be a better website if it wasn't all clearly AI-copy.

"Nothing commits without its gate."

Comment by animeshchouhan 1 hour ago

the website isn't the product. try copperhead and judge the engineering :)

Comment by hilariously 2 minutes ago

The website is the marketing for the product, most people see that first, and they wont go further if your front door is festooned with goofball stuff.

Comment by 2 hours ago

Comment by mattanimation 1 hour ago

look inside, sees typescript, walks away.

Comment by animeshchouhan 1 hour ago

when LLM calls are the bottleneck, the programming language stops mattering.

Comment by 1 hour ago

Comment by Tiberium 2 hours ago

https://github.com/i2cjak/T3CAD seems like another promising project

Comment by tadasv 2 hours ago

I used claude and gemini to edit/debug kicad schematics. And it was pretty good. What is the point of this agent?

Comment by animeshchouhan 2 hours ago

copperhead isn't just a wrapper around claude or gpt. it combines model intelligence with its own hardware IR, deterministic engines and continuous verification.

Comment by j16sdiz 1 hour ago

User just couldn't care less.

Do it have extra feature? Speed? Ease of use?

Comment by animeshchouhan 37 minutes ago

we have the wrapper orchestrator + additional specialized tools. so yeah we are better than just wrappers.

Comment by guhidalg 2 hours ago

Some PM realized that agents will not push back against waterfall style project planning, so now we get an agent for all possible versions of waterfall projects.

Comment by animeshchouhan 2 hours ago

fair critique but copperhead works as a feedback loop: design, verify, revise and repeat. closer to an engineering control loop than waterfall with an agent on top :)

Comment by TechSquidTV 2 hours ago

Is it doing any circuit simulation or anything?

Comment by animeshchouhan 39 minutes ago

we are building tool plane integrations around the same. stay tuned!

Comment by toss1 2 hours ago

When it gets to the end of the design loops, can it run simulations and tests, or is that out of scope i.e., for another product? (I didn't notice testing on a very quick peruse, but that doesn't mean I didn't simply miss it)

Comment by animeshchouhan 39 minutes ago

we are building tool plane integrations around the same. stay tuned!

Comment by electric_mayhem 2 hours ago

I use a jigsaw to cut wood. It works pretty good. What’s the point of a table saw?

Comment by mitxela 1 hour ago

You joke but my coping saw cuts wood much faster than any of my normal saws. I don't know a lot about saws, I presume it's the type of blade on it. And I do indeed have three saws, which is a lot for someone who doesn't know much about saws. One that says it's good for cutting metal, one for wood and one for tight corners in wood (a coping saw).

Comment by animeshchouhan 57 minutes ago

wait are you the mitxela from youtube fluid simulation pendant video