News: 0180399633

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Dual-PCB Linux Computer With 843 Components Designed By AI Boots On First Attempt (tomshardware.com)

(Tuesday December 16, 2025 @10:30PM (BeauHD) from the it's-alive dept.)


Quilter says its AI [1]designed a complex Linux single-board computer in just one week , booting Debian on first power-up. "Holy crap, it's working," exclaimed one of the engineers. Tom's Hardware reports:

> LA-based startup Quilter has outlined [2]Project Speedrun , which marks a milestone in computer design by AI. The headlining claims are that Quilter's AI facilitated the design of a new Linux SBC, using 843 parts and dual-PCBs, taking just one week to finish, then successfully booting Debian the first time it was powered up. The Quilter team reckon that the AI-enhanced process it demonstrated could unlock a new generation of computer hardware makers.



[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/dual-pcb-linux-computer-with-843-components-designed-by-ai-boots-on-first-attempt-project-speedrun-was-made-in-just-one-week-and-required-less-than-40-hours-of-human-work

[2] https://www.quilter.ai/project-speedrun



Beowulf cluster? (Score:5, Funny)

by blue trane ( 110704 )

Can you imagine AI designing a beowulf cluster to ... ?

Re: (Score:2)

by Some Guy ( 21271 )

I think maybe only fellow Ancient Ones will remember this :-)

Thanks for the laugh.

Re: (Score:2)

by thegreatemu ( 1457577 )

Get back to me when AI can make me a bowl of hot grits.

Re: (Score:2)

by chmod a+x mojo ( 965286 )

Well, at least it can already make Natalie Portman!

Hmm...cribbed from the SoC application notes? (Score:2)

by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 )

There's all sorts of good stuff in the application notes of IC catalogs. Some of it not even copyrighted.

Came across a Burr-Brown (!) catalog in the library at work about 15 years back. And I was thinking...why would our professionally staffed research library keep a vendor catalog from a defunct company? And then I opened it and saw a whole cook book for high frequency analog designs.

Re: Hmm...cribbed from the SoC application notes? (Score:2)

by david1k ( 10356432 )

It is the way.

Dual-PCB = someone else's design (Score:2)

by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 )

So they are not only lazy but stealing other people's work as well.

Welcome to the age of AI.

Re:Dual-PCB = someone else's design (Score:5, Insightful)

by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

Yes that's how electrical engineering works. Engineers "steal" the work vendors put into their datasheets, hook-up diagrams, interfacing requirements, standard layout requirements, etc.

This is literally how it all works. Precisely no one designs something truly from scratch without using someone else's work, and that work is published along with the components you buy.

Re: (Score:2)

by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

> So no one ever has designed anything original? It was all always here?

Wrong trope, it's you didn't build that. And it's accurate as stated. Practically every datasheet includes a reference design circuit which is intended and provided for people actually SmarterThanYou to integrate into their own designs. It's not a complete design for a product, so there is still potentially work to be duplicated if you are really into that.

Quilter's PCB *layout* FTW (Score:3, Informative)

by doof_debug ( 1102605 )

Quilter user here. I think the subject is a bit misleading. Quilter performs the often difficult, always tedious job of PCB layout. Someone, likely a human, actually designed the schematics, uploaded the KiCAD or Altium project files to Quilter and *it* did the layout.

Raccoons or beavers? Re:It's not really a surprise (Score:1)

by davidwr ( 791652 )

I'm placing my bets on the sharks. They have lasers. Pew! Pew! Pewpewpew!

Re: (Score:2)

by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 )

Ill-tempered sea bass.

Re: (Score:2)

by Uldis Segliņš ( 4468089 )

Oh, you never know what would become illegal with backwards in time working new law consequences with new rulers. I'll better go burn my Bober ku.*wa tshirt.

Your AI designed personal computer! (Score:4, Interesting)

by Jeremi ( 14640 )

Q: What's in the box?

A: We don't really know, lol, but it seems to work okay!

Q: Will it keep my data secure?

A: There's no way to know, let's just hope for the best!

Re: (Score:2)

by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

To be fair, the same is true of a lot of human designs too. Lots of modules and highly integrated ICs used, all basically black boxes. Not as bad, but certainly not immune to screw ups either.

I wonder if it passed EMC and ESD.

enough (Score:2)

by noshellswill ( 598066 )

"The Quilter team reckon ..." Enough, already. If I want to read AI-text I'll watch UTUBE.

Re: (Score:2)

by thegreatemu ( 1457577 )

Is that a really big nanotube?

Hmm, I'm not convinced (Score:2)

by hwstar ( 35834 )

full signal integrity and thermal analysis? What about design for manufacturability and test? There's a lot of iteration and back and forth between sales and marketing

requesting changes after a spec has been written, the high level design has been done and approved too.

Engineering a product from scratch is really all about finding out what you don't know and then trying to architect the design as the unknowns become knowns, while mitigating the design risk. Its sort of like reducing a sauce in cooking. The

Why would it take one week? (Score:2)

by hambone142 ( 2551854 )

A.I. should be able to design the circuitry in much less than an hour.

Re: (Score:2)

by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 )

If it doesn't do it in under 30 minutes, the next one's free!

"Design"? (Score:2)

by gweihir ( 88907 )

As in finding the reference design and putting that on a PCB? Color me non-impressed.

Re: (Score:2)

by djgl ( 6202552 )

Yep,

[1]https://www.quilter.ai/project... [quilter.ai]

and

[2]https://www.nxp.com/design/des... [nxp.com]

are VERY similar.

[1] https://www.quilter.ai/project-speedrun

[2] https://www.nxp.com/design/design-center/development-boards-and-designs/8MMINILPD4-EVK

The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
"Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
"Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
And the grey roof reddened and rang;
Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
The tip of my ear. Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
"... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
"The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
"And I was ask'd and authorized to go
To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
"So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
"I've measured it from side to side;
Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"