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Ants: routing and our own terms (from Nov 2026)

Ants

Our in-house router and whole-PCB design journey. Named 3 Nov 2026. Command: ants route board.kicad_pcb.

How it looks

Drawing: our process, not a physical object
THE BOARD JOURNEY, STAGES 0 TO 90Brief1Architecture2Parts3Schematic4Constraints5Placement6Routing7Verify8Order9Bring-upthe Ants engine does stage 6; the rest of Ants is the journey around itants route board.kicad_pcb
Ants is two things: the whole journey from a brief to a fab order, and the engine that does the routing stage. Named on 3 Nov 2026 (decision D2).
Real image: CORE3588, rendered by KiCad from our board file
10 mm
CORE3588, our hardest benchmark: Sam routed it by hand. The plan is to strip its copper, let Ants route it, and compare. Sam is the floor to beat, not a route to copy (D11).

How it works

chipA TOY BOARD, SEEN FROM ABOVEdashed: must join,not yet coppercopper tracksdashed = bottom layerKiCad check (DRC)0 errors, 0 unjoinedNidhish decides:go to fab?parts already placed,no copper yet

Where it fits

The engine side is described by the three dials; the build order is the thin slice; our edge over other routers is the co-design loop.

Ants works after placement and before Gerbers go out; its scores come from the benchmark referee on the research and test pools.

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