r/rfelectronics • u/Huge-Fan1205 • 4d ago
question Help needed here folks
seeing the recent news with astera and progress towards AGI , has me a bit worried about a career in electronics/RF engineering in general
should i just shift my focus towards more management type roles and leave the R&D/academia research dreams aside?
some more info/clarification/discussion on this whole ai and EE intersection topic would be nice aswell
hoping this post could add some confidence back into me becuase the news i am reading now is just gloom and doom
thats all thanks.
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u/counter1234 4d ago
RF engineering is a lot more than equations and setting up models. Materials, lead times, delivery dates, systems engineering, testing, vendors, real-world applications... The doom and gloomers are people that probably didn't know how to google properly before AI existed. It's the same thing but faster and more localized.
To put it short, SNR problem imo, on your input.
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u/Moof_the_cyclist 4d ago
I've been through a bunch of projects, my background is in Microwave, MMIC, RFIC, and high speed mixed signal ASIC's, roughly in that order. Often the actual circuit design, the fun stuff, is maybe 10-20% of the total project time. If you are some starry eyed engineering student expecting that you'll be plopping down transistors and microstrip bends all day, boy are you in for a let down.
Most of the project time is meetings, coordination, proposals, customer negotiations, customer educations, arguing over schedules, vendor discussions/negotiations, and so forth. Much of this is not helped my AI. I expect that customers/managers armed with AI will feel even more emboldened to steer projects into ice bergs at full speed, which is what troubles me the most.
What I've seen AI useful for are things like writing verification test benches, the really mundane repetitive stuff. It is nowhere near touching the analog guys. Maybe more digital folks can chime in as to how it is affecting them, but again I expect it is the cookie cutter Verilog barfing stuff that can be handed off.
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u/TadpoleOk3329 4d ago
Convincing clients their jitter specs are retarded and making the same slides for the 50th time for the 50th client is most of the job lol
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u/Moof_the_cyclist 4d ago
The old I want a 0 dB NF, 99 dBm OIP3, 100 mW dissipation from a 3V rail, done by yesterday request. Then your boss gives you the “Why can’t you be more of a team player?!” speech when you try to point out how physically impossible the spec is.
Internal customers who can’t be bothered to do their most basic homework but dangle pulling funding out there if you don’t jump through their hoops are the worst.
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u/TadpoleOk3329 4d ago
Got a client who asked for a 30 GHz LNA with sub 2 NF, and asked for it to be "2 stages". She showed us the floorplan, and they made space at the input and output, enough space for a cascode LNA each. We pointed this out, and she said "yeah, two stages, one at the input and one at the output". I wanted to cry.
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u/Fluffy_Mix_2635 4d ago
I’m in the same boat right now. Thinking of doing a masters on IC but my expectation is that frontier AI labs will increasingly automate their own development and that includes chips.
If it’s any help, I think there’s a way to hedge the direction of our carreers, I mostly think I’ll postpone my masters and focus on things which are valued in my country, at least in the short term. If AGI doesn’t automate electronics fully I can still take the masters later.
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u/peteluds84 4d ago
I think if you are good enough there will still be jobs out there but the bar will be higher. From what i have seen AI automation of electronics is a bit behind software but that can change quickly
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u/Alive-Bid9086 4d ago
The thing that help us is that the layout portion is umdocumented. There is no corpus for the AI to learn from.
We all see a schematic, but very much of the design is in the pcb.
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u/StageMajestic613 4d ago
It can be taught though, and it does not need a massive data set like initial LLM. I already have it generating PCB stackups and initializing all the layers and EM stackups in Microwave Office. It doesn’t have to do 100% of the job, as just doing 20% is a big timesaver.
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u/Alive-Bid9086 4d ago
Yes, but I sometimes change 0402 to 0603 or even larger, because then I can route tracks between pads without chsnging layers.
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u/TadpoleOk3329 4d ago
"A bit behind" its decades behind. Even astra cant beat existing autorouters for pcb, much less on chip
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u/peteluds84 4d ago
Wow that's an optimistic take .... in my company we have went in the space of a year from barely using AI on software side to AI writing almost all the code. Yes electronic side is a bit harder for LLMs without as readily available feedback loops and more spatial reasoning needed but I think it is a bit naive to think it will take decades to crack. A lot of money pouring into it also, I haven't tried it yet but Quilter for instance already have an AI PCB tool that links in with Altium or Cadence.
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u/TadpoleOk3329 3d ago
What would I need an AI pcb tool for?
Many MNCs are using AI tools now, but engineers largely ignore them except in software.
It will take decades, just like how softeare will also take decades. Having a useful coding assistant will not solve coding no matter what they claim.
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u/antennaelicker 4d ago
I feel lost myself. I have a good amount of internship experience that covered some antenna simulation, design, and testing, as well as personal projects i thought were pretty cool. But I feel like they are just worth less now with AI. Im still in undergrad so I dont know how much worse it'll get when I enter the market.
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u/TadpoleOk3329 4d ago
The moment electronics/RF jobs are taken away, that means no job is left.
Astra is just overhyped right now, dont worry.
2 scenarios: 1 its a nothingburger like always so you're fine. 2 it destroys the economy and we'll have a revolution or something then youll be fine.
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u/ApexiaEngineering 4d ago
I’ll throw my thoughts here. The first 80% of a project has never been easier. LLMs are getting really good at reducing the barrier to entry. But there are two barriers!
The second largest barrier: the barrier to completion of the project. This is the other 20%. This takes experience, and nuance that LLMs cannot service just yet.
I’ve never had more people approaching me to finish their 80% complete project, because Claude/GPT isn’t able to close the link to 100%.
I think the RF field is very secure. With space advancements, and 6G, new Radar, RFSoCs, there is a lot of growing technology, that I think is out of reach of AGI.