Trade.Information

Company Name: Altium

Company Type: Printed Circuit Boards

Company Profile

Altium (formerly Protel International Limited) was founded by Nick Martin in 1985 in Hobart, Tasmania, to develop PC-based software to aid in the design of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). His initial DOS PCB design tool was readily accepted by the Australian electronics industry, and by mid-1986 Altium was exporting the design package through distributors to the United States and Europe. As a result of the success of this PCB design package, Altium extended its product range to include schematic capture, PCB autorouting and automatic PCB component placement software. In the late eighties Altium recognized that an opportunity existed to develop Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software utilizing the Microsoft Windows platform. There was little EDA software available for the Windows platform at the time, despite advances in its processing capabilities and reliability, and there were increasing numbers of design engineers using Windows-based operating systems. Consequently, in 1991 Altium released the world’s first Windows-based PCB design system, Advanced PCB. Over the next few years, and with the benefit of various product additions and enhancements, Altium established itself as an innovative developer of EDA software. In 1997, Altium identified a growing need to present all core EDA software tools as one integrated package, thereby allowing a seamless progression from design concept through to production. Consequently Altium released Protel 98, specially built for the Windows NT platform and the first product to include and integrate all five core EDA tools – schematic capture, Programmable Logic Device (PLD) design, simulation, board design, and autorouting. This in turn was followed by the release of Protel 99 and a second edition, Protel 99 SE in 1999, which provided increased automation of the design process, further integration of the various design tools, and introduced the "Design Explorer" platform. The Design Explorer platform allows seamless integration of all aspects of electronic design – design tools, document management, component libraries etc – and was the launching pad for Altium’s vision of building a fully integrated design system covering the full range of electronic design technologies. This in turn led to Altium undertaking a successful IPO, and listing on the Australian stock market in August 1999. The funds raised were used to make suitable company and technology acquisitions in 2000/01, including the purchases of ACCEL Technologies, Metamor Inc, Innovative CAD Software and TASKING BV. With these technologies Altium was able to enter the FPGA Design and Synthesis market in 2000, and the Embedded Software Development market in 2001. To better reflect the company’s new market position of having multiple brands in the embedded and FPGA as well as EDA markets, on August 6, 2001 Protel International was renamed Altium Limited. This new corporate master-brand was designed to equally represent all product brands and provide a unified platform for future growth. Altium's ongoing commitment to product development and providing engineers with the best design tools to enable them to achieve their goals is the key to its success. In 2002 Altium re-engineered the Design Explorer (DXP) platform and with Protel DXP launched the first product on the new DXP platform. Protel DXP was the first product in the EDA industry to address the entire board-design process within a single application. Today Altium has approximately 300 employees worldwide, with its head office located at Frenchs Forest in Sydney, Australia. Research and development activities are conducted in Sydney and Europe. The company operates sales and support offices in Australia, the United States, Japan, Europe and China, as well as maintains a network of resellers in all major markets including India and the UK. Altium’s current product lines include: Altium Designer , P-CAD, TASKING, and a range of hardware products for interactive FPGA design.

About Company

Remaining competitive in today's electronics industry demands that you create more intelligent products in much shorter time frames. The future of electronic product development lies in utilizing the potential of the latest electronic devices such as high-capacity programmable logic to accelerate hardware and software design, allowing more innovative products to be developed faster. Altium is the only company 100% focused on ensuring that all engineers are fully equipped to take advantage of crucial emerging design technologies and trends. We are the only company bringing together and unifying the different design disciplines involved in electronics development to allow you to approach design in new and innovative ways and bring more intelligent products to market faster. Benefits of unified electronic product development Speeds time-to-market by allowing concurrent hardware, programmable hardware and software development. Allows all aspects of electronic product development to be designed and managed within a single system, smoothing the transition from design to production. Enables new design possibilities by opening up the potential offered by high-capacity programmable devices to both board-level and software-level engineers. Allows crucial application architecture decisions, such as processor and FPGA choices and hardware/software partitioning, to remain open and easily changeable until late in the development cycle. Allows an iterative approach to design that facilitates experimentation and allows designers to interactively evaluate 'what if' scenarios without extending design time – LiveDesign. Allows both hardware and software engineers to make full use of the potential of high-capacity programmable devices to accelerate application development. Provides new and innovative design possibilities that are not available with conventional point tools and disparate design flows. Allows more intelligent electronic products to be designed faster and more cost-effectively than previously possible. Let us be your partner into the future Only Altium is 100% committed to ensuring that all engineers, and their organizations, are fully equipped to take advantage of these crucial emerging design technologies and trends. Only Altium continuously invests in the latest electronics design technologies and delivers these technologies to every engineer as they are developed. Only Altium removes the barriers between today's disparate design flows by unifying the different design disciplines involved in electronics product development. Only Altium enables you to approach design in new and innovative ways and bring more intelligent products to market faster and more cost-effectively.