Altium

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.

Altium Limited

Type	Public
Industry	EDA, FPGA, Embedded Systems, Printed circuit board
Founded	1985
Founder(s)	Nick Martin[1]
Headquarters	Sydney, NSW, Australia
Products	Altium Designer, AltiumLive, Altium Vaults, NanoBoard NB2, NanoBoard 3000, TASKING
Revenue	US$ 45 M (FY 2010)
Employees	275 (at June 2010)
Website	www.altium.com

History

Nicholas Martin, an electronics designer doing design work at the University of Tasmania 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.^[2]

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.[1] 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.[2]

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., 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^[3], 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^[4].

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.^[5]

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.^[6], 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.

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.[3] 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.

Altium NanoBoard 3000

Products

• Altium Designer – 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 systems software development tool.
• P-CAD
• Autotrax

See also

• List of EDA companies
• Electronics
• Electronic engineering
• FPGAs
• Embedded Systems
• Printed circuit board (PCB)
• List of companies of Australia

References

1. ^ Nick Martin Executive Focus, February 1, 2005 , Kevin Morris, FPGA and Programmable Logic Journal
2. ^ Tomorrow's world: the Australian initiative. North Sydney: Associated Publishing Corporation (APC). 1995. ISBN 0-646-25348-4. http://apc-online.com/twa/manufacturing2.html#Innovation018. 
3. ^ *Goossens, Paul (2008-03-01). "From C to Hardware: using FPGAs and compilers". Elektor. http://www.elektor.com/Uploads/Files/UK2008030481.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 
4. ^ Chen, Wai-Kai (2002-12-01). Circuits and Filters Handbook, 2nd Edition. Boca Raton: CRC Press. pp. 2159–2161. ISBN 0-8493-0912-3. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=SmDImt1zHXkC&pg=RA2-PA2159&lpg=RA2-PA2159&dq=electronics+design+methodology+1990s&source=bl&ots=5-xP60XwbU&sig=JcS8YIW-itkc1nwe-O_yKXBcbJs&hl=en&ei=U22vSbewKYPQkAXX19DSBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PRA2-PA2159,M1. 
5. ^ Morris, Kevin (2007-07-19). "Altium’s Alternative: Turning System Design Inside Out". FPGA and Structured ASIC Journal. http://www.fpgajournal.com/articles_2007/20070619_altium.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-05. 
6. ^ "ALTIUM LIMITED (ALU)-ASX Listed Company Information Fact Sheet". Australian Securities Exchange. 2009. http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/CompanyInfoSearchResults.jsp?searchBy=asxCode&allinfo=on&asxCode=ALU. Retrieved 2009-03-04. ^{[dead link]}

Further reading

• Morris, Kevin (2010-12-14). "Head in the Clouds. Altium Leads Another Design Tool Revolution". Electronic Engineering Journal. http://www.eejournal.com/archives/articles/20101214-altium/. Retrieved 2011-03-31. 
• Maxfield, Clive (2008-07-07). "Software focus drives Altium’s ambition". EDA DesignLine. http://www.edadesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208802874. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 
• Maxfield, Clive (2008-02-05). "Altium launch Innovation Station featuring the Desktop NanoBoard". Programmable Logic DesignLine. http://www.pldesignline.com/206104574;jsessionid=GMZRO2WDNOADAQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?printableArticle=true. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 
• Morris, Kevin (2007-11-27). "Altium Goes 3D - Board Design Can Be Fun". FPGA & Structured ASIC Journal. http://www.fpgajournal.com/articles_2007/20071127_3d.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 
• Miller, Nick (2007-10-30). "Altium's altitude attitude". Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/altiums-altitude-attitude/2007/10/29/1193618795935.html. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 
• Goering, Richard (2006-11-14). "Altium links pc-boards with mechanical CAD". EDA DeignLine. http://www.edadesignline.com/products/194400033. Retrieved 2009-03-04. 

External links

• Official Site
• Wiki site for altium
• Altium Authorized Distributor in Indonesia