Current Trends in Automated Network Design Optimization

There is still a widely held view that the modern, high-speed, large storage digital computer is most effectively utilized as a tool for analysis, and that most, if not alI, decisions (even routine decisions) relating to optimal design are best left to the engineer himself. One reason for this view may arise out of the engineer's apprehension of a machine taking over the decision making process altogether. An alternative one may be that his system is so complex that even one analysis requires considerable effort. On a more mundane level, it may be that the engineer is so imbued by manual cut-and-try techniques as used in the laboratory under his control that he cannot envisage the possibility of fully automated design. Even the classicist must ultimately substitute numbers into his "exact" or "closed-form" solutions. It is probably some combination of such reasons that is inspiring the proliferation of effort devoted to the writing and implementing of general purpose circuit analysis programs.