Image2Net: Datasets, Benchmark and Hybrid Framework to Convert Analog Circuit Diagrams into Netlists

2025-05-09

2025 International Symposium of Electronics Design Automation (ISEDA)

AI Summary

Existing image-to-netlist conversion methods for analog schematics suffer from limited compatibility with diverse schematic styles and insufficient coverage of analog component types. To address these limitations, this paper proposes Image2Net—the first end-to-end framework supporting multi-style, multi-type analog components. Methodologically, it integrates deep learning–driven image recognition and structural parsing, rule-guided topological inference, and semantic consistency verification. We also introduce the first open-source schematic dataset featuring diversity and balanced complexity. Innovatively, we propose Netlist Edit Distance (NED) as a precision metric for quantitative evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate that Image2Net achieves an 80.77% conversion success rate on benchmark tests—surpassing state-of-the-art methods by 34.62–45.19%. Its average NED of 0.116 outperforms existing approaches by 62.1–69.6%, confirming substantial gains in structural and semantic fidelity.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Visual Reasoning & Symbolic Representations
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Analogy
• Machine Learning: Neuro-Symbolic Learning

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Foundation models and LLMs for Web-related graphs

Abstract

Large Language Model (LLM) exhibits great potential in designing of analog integrated circuits (IC) because of its excellence in abstraction and generalization for knowledge. However, further development of LLM-based analog ICs heavily relies on textual description of analog ICs, while existing analog ICs are mostly illustrated in image-based circuit diagrams rather than text-based netlists. Converting circuit diagrams to netlists help LLMs to enrich the knowledge of analog IC. Nevertheless, previously proposed conversion frameworks face challenges in further application because of limited support of image styles and circuit elements. Up to now, it still remains a challenging task to effectively convert complex circuit diagrams into netlists. To this end, this paper constructs and opensources a new dataset with rich styles of circuit diagrams as well as balanced distribution of simple and complex analog ICs. And a hybrid framework, named Image2Net, is proposed for practical conversion from circuit diagrams to netlists. The netlist edit distance (NED) is also introduced to precisely assess the difference between the converted netlists and ground truth. Based on our benchmark, Image2Net achieves 80.77% successful rate, which is 34.62%-45.19% higher than previous works. Specifically, the proposed work shows 0.116 averaged NED, which is 62.1%-69.6% lower than state-of-the-arts.

Problem

• Converting analog circuit diagrams to netlists for LLM use
• Overcoming limited image styles and circuit element support
• Accurately assessing conversion quality with netlist edit distance

Innovation

• Hybrid framework converts circuit diagrams to netlists
• New dataset with rich styles and balanced complexity
• Netlist edit distance metric for precise evaluation