The Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas has completed the acquisition of PCB Layout Software Maker Altium (https://www.powerelectronicsnews.com/renesas-acquires-altium-as-part-of-its-digitalization-strategy/). Renesas paid $5.9bn for Altium, which had a revenue of $263m in 2023. Along with the PCB software, Renesas now have control of component search website Octopart, which Altium acquired in 2017.
This acquisition is aimed at enhancing its capabilities in digital device design and supporting its digital transformation. This move propels Renesas to become a comprehensive solutions provider rather than just a chip vendor, strengthening its position in the competitive landscape.
The industry media fails to mention KiCad (http://www.kicad.org/), a free PCB software that has become an increasingly serious competition for Altium in recent years. What do Soylentils think about the reasons why Renesas spent such a premium over the core business size?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by epitaxial on Wednesday August 28 2024, @05:51PM (1 child)
I keep my Altium skills polished because it's a good resume keyword but lately the amount of jobs who mention Altium has really decreased. I've used Kicad and it's quite capable but I find it clunky in comparison. Altium does a lot more than just schematic capture and PCB layout. They integrate lots of simulation and FPGA tools as well.
In my latest round of job search I thought maybe a remote PCB designer could be lucrative. Turns out there isn't much available and I didn't know wether to laugh or cry when the job search results were only hits for the Altium company itself needing sales people...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ShovelOperator1 on Thursday August 29 2024, @10:55AM
Notice one thing: There is a significant difference in the workflow between schematic capture and schematic development.
These are two important phases. KiCad's Eeschema is a really good schematic capture program, but quite poor schematic development. While working with KiCAD, my schematic development happens in head or in a piece of paper. Next, during the capture phase, I redraw it to the complete schematic.
Introducing corrections in Eeschema is a real pain in the bottom, usually ends with redrawing half of the document.
Meanwhile, in Altium or even Proteus, schematic can be easily transformed, extended and edited, making it also a good visualization tool, because you sometimes have to draw a schematic to visualize is it OK or not like you sometimes need to write a word to make sure it's written right or wrong.
Altium was really popular when it was called Protel and there were almost no affordable (for a business not being an international corporation) alternatives. Next, hobbyists switched to KiCad, free version of Eagle or pirated version of Proteus, while corporations switched to powerful integrated tools like DT or CR5000 then CR8000, which although looks like a ****, but does its job surprisingly well if you have split attention.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dustbuster on Wednesday August 28 2024, @08:34PM
I've found that Altium's pricing is exorbitant, and last time I tried to use it, it was difficult to use. I've used various other tools over the years (Eagle, KiCAD, PADS, Cadence) and few of them are simple to use.
I use Diptrace at home and at Work. Sure it's not as fully featured as Altium, but I can still do HDI boards with custom stack-ups, differential high speed traces, rigid flexes (with some limitations) etc. And at the cost of $995 for one license in perpetuity vs a minimum $355 per month for Altium. And best of all with Diptrace it 100% free of the cloud.
The sad thing I see is companies using Altium for which basically hobby level electronics (those companies aren't in the electronics design business), where they would be much better served by an easier to use tool.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday August 28 2024, @11:14PM (1 child)
Submitter here. First off, I'm a KiCAD-only person and have done a complex device with dozens of boards without issue. I started with V4, am now on V8, and think there are worlds between. It went from "it can somehow get the job done" to "that's really neat." My favourite customer is an Altium shop, though, and I have to work with their schematics. Apart from the new Altium-made ones, there are legacy ones that have been done on old CAD systems that were "high end" back in the day, but are ridiculously primitive compared to today's KiCAD. In this spectrum, I think there's nothing they do that KiCAD couldn't easily pull off.
If I assume a capital cost of 5%, the interest is 295M/a, which is not only above the profit, but above the revenue of the whole Altium shop. The deal wouldn't make any sense if there isn't some hidden plan to realize a quarter of a bllion dollars per year in extra profit. Raising prices and winning new customers will be hard with a free competitor. A good part of the customers might eventually decide that KiCAD is "more than good enough" if Altium's demands become too obscene.
So, maybe Renesas are worried that they hardly get any new business and want to push their components through "preferred" placement in the libraries and educational materials?! With Altium having a near monopoly with customers they aim for? (When was the last time you considered to pick a part that Renesas has any margin on? In 1983, a classic uPD765/7220 combo for a CP/M system?)
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday August 31 2024, @11:47PM
You’re right, the recent killing off of perpetual licensing for Altium Designer is causing a lot of people to switch away (KiCAD, Allegro, etc), as discussed on the EEVBlog forums:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-is-killing-off-perpetual-ad/ [eevblog.com]
I use Altium a lot at work, I haven’t used KiCAD much the past few years so I might get more handy with it and play around with it. I use the impedance controlled rules functions in it a lot but I have recently learned (from someone who used to teach Altium to people) that it’s not that accurate. Might lean more heavily on tools like SatutnPCB etc. I’m sick of the lack of stability in Altium, that’s the major thing for me lately.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Dr Spin on Thursday August 29 2024, @07:09AM (1 child)
Thus ensuring the skills to use Altium will be dead in less than 10 years. Good design engineers generally start as hobbyists, and move higher up the chain after 10 years or so.
.
Hopefully component manufacturers will realise they buy more design-ins by adding their parts to the Kicad library - not only will the hobbyists buy a couple of parts, but they often go on to be the most productive design engineers.
Provided the part actually works, and the data sheet does not omit significant aspects of the performance (or lie about them), you can look forward to a life-time of design-ins.
I am still specifying 1N4001's and 1N4148's - which I probably first used over 30 years ago. There may be other equally suitable, or even better, parts, but why would I look at the data sheet for a part costing less than 1p? The design I am working on uses 10 diodes per board, and I have used 65 diodes on a board design.
Does anyone want a slightly used 1N0000 - "smoke emitting diode"? (Colour code: 4 black bands on a black background :-)
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Thursday August 29 2024, @07:37AM
I was torn between 'Informative' and 'Funny' - both were applicable.
The fact that I had burst out laughing at the last line of your comment swung it for me!
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.