Altium Limited
Encyclopedia
Altium Limited is an Australian based software company that provides PC-based electronics design software for engineers. Founded in 1985, Altium has headquarters in Sydney and sales offices in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and resellers in all other major markets. The company was known as "Protel" until 2001.
in the 1980s, recognized that the tools then available limited the ability to design printed circuit boards - either through a difficult manual process, or by requiring high-priced software that required expensive mainframe computers. With the development of the personal computer
, Martin saw an opportunity to make the design of electronics product affordable - by marrying the techniques of electronics design to the PC platform. In 1985 he founded Protel, launching the company’s first product later that same year - a DOS
-based printed circuit board
(PCB) layout- and design-tool.
In August 1999, Altium was listed as a public company (ASX:ALU) to assist in funding of strategic technology development and acquisition. The company continued to develop and release new versions of this design tool, followed by Protel for Windows – the world’s first Microsoft Windows
-based PCB design system.
Protel’s headquarters resided in Sydney, NSW, Australia until 1990 when Nick Martin decided to move the company to Silicon Valley, which was proving to be a hot spot for technology companies.http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4215028/Meandering-musings-on-Altium-s-bold-and-exciting-move-to-Shanghai In 2001, he changed the company’s name to Altium and moved operations back to Sydney. Then in 2011, Altium announced they will be moving their headquarters to Shanghai, China in the second half of 2011; again, to be in a hot spot for technology companies. The company will remain an Australian company and will continue to be listed on the Australian stock exchange.http://altium.com/files/corp/investor/pdfs/Altium_to_relocate_its_global_HQ_to_China.pdf
based EDA software developer.
Altium acquired Tasking in 2001, a supplier of embedded software design technology that was integrated into Altium’s product offerings to create a complete electronics design system.
In 2010 Altium acquired Morfik Technology Pty Ltd.
, a developer of visual design tools for engineering and deploying cloud-based software applications.
To counter the limitations imposed by separate stand-alone design tools or domain specific tool-chains, the company began developing a unified electronics design system, which uses a single data model to hold all of the design data required to create a product. FPGA, PCB and embedded software development processes were unified with a common project view and data model. A variety of editing tools could then be used to access and manipulate the design, covering areas such as board layout and design, schematic capture
, routing (EDA)
, testing, analysis and FPGA design.
In the second half of the 1990s, the company began acquisition of various companies with the technologies needed to create a unified electronics design solution. In 1999 it listed on the Australian Stock Exchange
to generate the capital to conclude these acquisitions., and in 2001, the company changed its name to Altium, to distinguish its products from the earlier Protel PCB layout solutions.
Due to the limitations of existing software platforms, Altium created its own platform called Design Explorer (DXP), hosted on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which formed the foundation of the Altium Designer product. The first version was released in 2004, with major new releases in 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009.
In September 2010, Altium announced the pending acquisition of Morfik Technology
, a provider of cloud-based software applications, in an all-stock transaction worth an estimated AU$3.3 million. The move signaled the company's expectations that cloud technology will pervade future electronic and embedded systems. The deal was completed in November 2010.
History
Nicholas Martin, an electronics designer doing design work at the University of TasmaniaUniversity of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
in the 1980s, recognized that the tools then available limited the ability to design printed circuit boards - either through a difficult manual process, or by requiring high-priced software that required expensive mainframe computers. With the development of the personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
, Martin saw an opportunity to make the design of electronics product affordable - by marrying the techniques of electronics design to the PC platform. In 1985 he founded Protel, launching the company’s first product later that same year - a DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
-based printed circuit board
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
(PCB) layout- and design-tool.
In August 1999, Altium was listed as a public company (ASX:ALU) to assist in funding of strategic technology development and acquisition. The company continued to develop and release new versions of this design tool, followed by Protel for Windows – the world’s first Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
-based PCB design system.
Protel’s headquarters resided in Sydney, NSW, Australia until 1990 when Nick Martin decided to move the company to Silicon Valley, which was proving to be a hot spot for technology companies.http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4215028/Meandering-musings-on-Altium-s-bold-and-exciting-move-to-Shanghai In 2001, he changed the company’s name to Altium and moved operations back to Sydney. Then in 2011, Altium announced they will be moving their headquarters to Shanghai, China in the second half of 2011; again, to be in a hot spot for technology companies. The company will remain an Australian company and will continue to be listed on the Australian stock exchange.http://altium.com/files/corp/investor/pdfs/Altium_to_relocate_its_global_HQ_to_China.pdf
Acquisitions
In 2000, while still doing business as Protel, the company acquired Accel, a San Diego-based EDA software developer.
Altium acquired Tasking in 2001, a supplier of embedded software design technology that was integrated into Altium’s product offerings to create a complete electronics design system.
In 2010 Altium acquired Morfik Technology Pty Ltd.
Morfik
Morfik Technology Pty Ltd., an Australian company, is the developer of Morfik, a set of visual designers, compilers and a Framework combined in an Integrated development environment aimed at developing Ajax applications in a high-level language such as Java, C#, BASIC or Object Pascal. Morfik...
, a developer of visual design tools for engineering and deploying cloud-based software applications.
Unifying electronics design
In the mid-1990s, the industry was moving towards the use of newly-affordable technologies such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) instead of individual components fixed to a PCB, however the design tools used for PCBs and those used for programmable logic systems were markedly different and the difference was becoming an obstacle to electronics design.To counter the limitations imposed by separate stand-alone design tools or domain specific tool-chains, the company began developing a unified electronics design system, which uses a single data model to hold all of the design data required to create a product. FPGA, PCB and embedded software development processes were unified with a common project view and data model. A variety of editing tools could then be used to access and manipulate the design, covering areas such as board layout and design, schematic capture
Schematic capture
Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer...
, routing (EDA)
Routing (EDA)
In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards and integrated circuits . It builds on a preceding step, called placement, which determines the location of each active element of an IC or component on a PCB...
, testing, analysis and FPGA design.
In the second half of the 1990s, the company began acquisition of various companies with the technologies needed to create a unified electronics design solution. In 1999 it listed on the Australian Stock Exchange
Australian Stock Exchange
The Australian Securities Exchange was created by the merger of the Australian Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange in July 2006. It is the primary stock exchange group in Australia....
to generate the capital to conclude these acquisitions., and in 2001, the company changed its name to Altium, to distinguish its products from the earlier Protel PCB layout solutions.
Due to the limitations of existing software platforms, Altium created its own platform called Design Explorer (DXP), hosted on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which formed the foundation of the Altium Designer product. The first version was released in 2004, with major new releases in 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009.
In September 2010, Altium announced the pending acquisition of Morfik Technology
Morfik
Morfik Technology Pty Ltd., an Australian company, is the developer of Morfik, a set of visual designers, compilers and a Framework combined in an Integrated development environment aimed at developing Ajax applications in a high-level language such as Java, C#, BASIC or Object Pascal. Morfik...
, a provider of cloud-based software applications, in an all-stock transaction worth an estimated AU$3.3 million. The move signaled the company's expectations that cloud technology will pervade future electronic and embedded systems. The deal was completed in November 2010.
Bringing electronics design to the cloud
As discussed in the Altium white paper “What’s next for electronics devices,” engineers are increasingly responsible for designing and engineering web-based device ecosystems that consist of electronic devices connected via the Internet, as well as cloud-based software applications.http://www.fpgajournal.com/articles_2007/20070619_altium.htm.%20 To enable this next-generation of design, a new type of design solution was needed. In 2011 Altium introduced a platform aimed helping electronics designers develop their own ecosystems of intelligent, connected devices that can run cloud-based applications. By integrating Morfik technology with its own software and services, Altium was able to develop a connected, cloud-based platform for electronics design that includes Altium Designer, AltiumLive and Altium Vaults.Products
- Altium DesignerAltium DesignerAltium Designer is an EDA software package for printed circuit board, FPGA and embedded software design, and associated library and release management automation...
– unified electronics design solution. - AltiumLive – the cloud-based community that connects Altium designers, collaborators, suppliers, manufacturers and customers.
- Altium Vaults – unified databases hosted in the cloud.
- NanoBoard – reconfigurable hardware development platform.
- Innovation Station – a bundled combination of Altium Designer and the Desktop NanoBoard.
- TASKING – An embedded systemEmbedded systemAn embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
s software development tool. - P-CADP-CADP-CAD is a printed circuit board computer-aided design software package. P-CAD was originally developed by Accel Technologies, an EDA software corporation from San Diego, California, which was acquired by Altium in 2000...
- AutotraxAutotraxAutoTRAX EDA is a Windows XP/Vista schematic design/ PCB layout program with built in Spice simulator and 3D part and board visualization. It is not to be confused with the simple PCB CAD package originally developed by Protel in the 1980s and 1990s and which is still available as a free download...
See also
- List of EDA companies
- ElectronicsElectronicsElectronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
- Electronic engineeringElectronic engineeringElectronics engineering, also referred to as electronic engineering, is an engineering discipline where non-linear and active electrical components such as electron tubes, and semiconductor devices, especially transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, are utilized to design electronic...
- FPGAs
- Embedded Systems
- Printed circuit boardPrinted circuit boardA printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
(PCB) - List of companies of Australia