Physix FrontierPhysix Frontier · News Briefing Card (Hacker News · Oct 9, 2026)
DeepRoute Debuts AI-Era Auto-Router, Runs 146 Routing Trials per Compile
KEY FACTS
- DeepRoute is the built-in router in PackageCompiler, using a parallel tournament mechanism rather than a single routing pass.
- One compile runs 146 complete routing trials, executed across seven parallel batches.
- Trial results are scored across multiple dimensions including opens, routing efficiency, congestion, and signal integrity.
- Each compile provides three levels of electromagnetic analysis: closed-form formulas, 2D boundary element, and 3D full-wave solving.
- The router automatically calculates trace width from target impedance and stackup, with no manual input required.
- Trace-to-via spacing is automatically set as a fraction of the wavelength at the operating frequency to maintain the return path.
KEY DATA
146Routing trials per compile
7Parallel batches
3EM analysis levels
PHYSIX OBSERVATION
Turning routing from a serial loop of tune-rerun-retune into a parallel tournament is essentially trading compute for the engineer's trial-and-error time. Parameters are searched rather than manually set, and signal and power are planned on the same layer - a real efficiency gain for advanced packaging design. But the premise is that inner-layer global routing must complete in seconds; otherwise the tree search is just talk on paper.
Source: Hacker News report