PICasso Uses LLMs to Optimize Silicon Photonic Circuit Design

Summary

Researchers introduce PICasso, an AI-assisted framework that converts natural-language specifications into silicon photonic layouts through a structured NL-to-YAML-to-GDS pipeline. It adds PDK knowledge, automated placement and routing, DRC/LVS validation, and SAX-based simulation. On the 36-task PIC-Set benchmark, PICasso improves specification satisfaction over vanilla LLM generation, reaching up to 92.7% structural Spec@3 and 52% functional Spec@3 on complex circuits. Simulation-guided optimization reduces mean insertion loss from 4.98 dB to 3.25 dB.