Why we're building Quilter
An overview of Quilter’s mission to streamline PCB layout through physics-driven automation, enabling engineers to rapidly explore, iterate, and optimize their designs.
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An overview of Quilter’s mission to streamline PCB layout through physics-driven automation, enabling engineers to rapidly explore, iterate, and optimize their designs.
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Quilter was founded by with a simple goal: to help engineers save valuable time by automating circuit board layout.
PCB layout is tedious and time-consuming. At Quilter, we envision a world where engineers spend more time exploring ideas and less time implementing them in CAD tools. A world where there are virtually no barriers or latency between documenting the requirements of a new physical product, and beginning to explore the tradeoffs and possibilities that could make it a reality.
Our vision is for Quilter to empower engineers and creators to rapidly explore ambitious ideas, understand interconnected constraints, and quickly discover optimal solutions. Quilter is purpose-built to facilitate software-driven creation and iteration, freeing engineers from the burden of manually specifying exactly how a board should be laid out.
Most EEs know that just because a PCB design is complete doesn't mean it's going to work.
PCB design fundamentally revolves around physics—electromagnetic behavior, current flow, thermal management, and timing constraints define a board’s success. At Quilter, we aim to anchor every layout decision in these physical realities, guiding our automated processes to generate, evaluate, and improve designs accordingly.
Because humans can't mentally simulate complex interactions like crosstalk or impedance, they often design conservatively, introducing inefficiencies such as oversized boards, unnecessary routing margins, or overly cautious constraints. Quilter combines reinforcement learning with rigorous physics-based rule checks, enabling it to push beyond human limitations to continuously optimize boards for performance, density, and manufacturability.
We're not only pursuing faster PCB layouts—we’re striving for better ones. Our goal is enable Quilter to create leaner, higher-performing boards precisely tailored to their functional requirements, eliminating manual guesswork and iterative redesigns. While Quilter is significantly faster, it is continually evolving to match and eventually surpass the optimization skills of expert human designers.
For details on our current progress and capabilities, see Current limitations.
Ironically, it's often faster and cheaper to fabricate and ship a circuit board from halfway around the world than it is to manually design it in the first place. Slow, manual layout processes mean that failed design iterations can significantly delay R&D timelines, causing many teams to adopt overly cautious, linear approaches that limit the ability to learn by building.
Quilter's objective is to transform this approach with the help of automation. By dramatically accelerating PCB layout, Quilter enables engineers to prototype immediately, iterate frequently, and rapidly refine their designs. Instead of cautiously committing to one design, teams can quickly test multiple candidates, identify issues early, rapidly adapt to real-world constraints, and evolve their solutions faster.
The result is a more agile development cycle that emphasizes rapid learning and continuous improvement. Engineers using Quilter don’t just build faster; they build smarter, gaining deeper insights into design tradeoffs, uncovering unexpected solutions, and delivering superior products to market in significantly less time.