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It's all change - Renesas picks up Altium

cstanton

Renesas to Acquire PCB Design Software Leader Altium to Make Electronics Design Accessible to Broader Market and Accelerate Innovation

"Together, Renesas and Altium, under a shared vision, aim to build an integrated and open electronics system design and lifecycle management platform that unifies these steps at a system level. The acquisition brings together Altium’s sophisticated cloud platform capabilities with Renesas’ strong portfolio of embedded solutions, combining high-performance processors, analog, power and connectivity. The combination will also enable integration with third-party vendors across the ecosystem to execute all electronic design steps seamlessly on the cloud. The electronics system design and lifecycle management platform will deliver integration and standardization of various electronic design data and functions and enhanced component lifecycle management, while enabling seamless digital iteration of design processes to increase overall productivity. This brings significantly faster innovation and lowers barriers to entry for system designers by reducing development resources and inefficiencies."

https://www.renesas.com/us/en/about/press-room/renesas-acquire-pcb-design-software-leader-altium-make-electronics-design-accessible-broader-market 

  • I get the feeling they probably wish to use some of the Altium team/knowledge for their products, e.g., to use their schematic entry perhaps, for programmable devices (like their programmable mixed-signal parts), which can use a schematic rather than HDL. It would save resources if their current software team could reuse some of that code (if Altium code is modular enough, I guess! - but they would have checked during the acquisition process, of course!).

    Probably plenty of cost savings for the firm as a result, and they still get to sell the existing CAD package too!

    Similarly, there's more and more complexity in systems, to the point that people have to use some configurable parts at a higher level than before and have to embrace Python, etc. There may well be a need to do more of that at a graphical level. I guess it would be quite neat to double-click on a schematic component and go inside and see the internal connections! : )

  • in reply to shabaz

    An interesting and valid perspective. I was wondering about this. My first reaction to the news was that this was a case of both needing each other, in light of competitors.

  • I wasn't really clear on the synergy here.  It may be that Renesas will inject some cash and support development of the product, particularly the hobbyist version - although I'm probably too invested in KiCad to switch.

  • Their vision is to make Renesas the Windows of electronics design and life cycle management - comprehensive extended services automated to make them accessible to a much wider user base at lower cost. (Not Windows in the sense of your personal beef with MS, but in the sense of something that enabled mainstream use of computers by everyone)

    It is a nice vision - hopefully they can pull it off. I like the lower cost idea (of course).

    The AI driven cloud services model is more problematic for me - that is a wait and see as to whether it can be swallowed....

  • in reply to Andrew J

    That would be the first time someone uses the word hobbyist in a Renesas building Slight smile

  • I recall when HP did the same thing with "Touchstone" and 10 years later "Eagleware" the price of the software went astronomical and support went down hill. They farmed the Eagleware software out to an India company who screwed it up. Best version was the last one that the original company had made.

    With that said Altium has been bounced around from different companies. So hopefully it will get better.

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    Probably true: my experience has been you need to have your wits about you with their MCUs!

  • in reply to sshaferdlm

    I think they wanted that Eagleware Genesys technology for their ADS product, even though they continue to sell it as a standalone product too. Very impressive software back then, I've not used any of the recent versions though. Sadly out of reach for individuals in terms of cost : ( 

  • It will be interesting to see what they do with the software and support.