Altium Limited is an American multinational software company that provides

electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

software to engineers who design

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of electrical conduction, conductive and Insulator (electricity), insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes ...

s. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

in 1985, the company has regional headquarters in the United States, Australia, China, Europe, and Japan. Its products are designed for use in a Microsoft Windows environment and used in industries such as automotive, aerospace, defence and telecommunications. Its flagship product, Altium Designer, is a software for unified electronics design. Since August 2024, Altium is a subsidiary of

Renesas Electronics is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo. The name "Renesas" is a contraction of "Renaissance Semiconductor for Advanced Solutions." The company was established in 2002 as Renesas Technology through the merger of the semi ...

History

1985–1991: Early history

The history of Altium dates to 1985 with the founding of Protel Systems Pty Ltd by electronics designer Nicholas Martin. He was working at the

University of Tasmania The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is a public research university, primarily located in Tasmania, Australia. Founded in 1890, it is Australia's fourth oldest university. Christ College (University of Tasmania), Christ College, one of the unive ...

in the 1980s. He saw an opportunity to make the design of electronics product affordable, by marrying the techniques of electronics design to the PC platform. The company launched its first product in 1985, a

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

-based

(PCB) layout and design tool. Protel PCB was marketed internationally by HST Technology Pty Ltd. since 1986. In October 1986 the San Diego–based ACCEL Technologies, Inc. acquired marketing and support responsibilities of the PCB program for the US, Canada and Mexico under the name Tango PCB. In 1987, Protel launched the circuit diagram editor

Protel Schematic Autotrax was a software application that ran on the DOS operating system on an IBM or compatible personal computer (PC). It was designed by Protel Systems, now Altium, and was one of the first professional printed circuit board computer-aided d ...

for DOS. This was followed by Autotrax and Easytrax in 1988. In the 1990s, 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 or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation (EDA) at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit, is created by a designer. This is done interac ...

routing (EDA) In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated circuits (ICs). It builds on a preceding step, called placement (electronic design automation), placemen ...

, testing, analysis and FPGA design. In 1991, Protel released Advanced Schematic/ PCB 1.0 for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, the world's first Windows-based PCB design system. It also began acquisition of various companies with the technologies needed to create a unified electronics design solution, including Accolade Design Automation in 1998.

1999–2010: IPO and name change to Altium

In August 1999, Altium went public on the

Australian Securities Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX) is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary Exchange (organized market), securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or c ...

under symbol (ASX:PRI). The company continued to develop and release new versions of this design tool, including Protel 98 in 1998, Protel 99 in 1999 and Protel 99 SE in 2000. In 2000, Altium acquired ACCEL with whom they previously partnered with in 1986. In 2001, the company changed its name from Protel Systems to Altium and continued to expand throughout the United States,

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. It also made more acquisitions including embedded software developer Tasking in 2001 for A$73.4 million and EDA software distributor Hoschar AG in 2002. Protel DXP was issued in 2003, Protel 2004 in 2004, Altium Designer 6.0 in 2005. In 2010, Altium acquired Morfik Technology Pty Ltd., a developer of visual design tools for engineering and deploying cloud-based software applications. Morfik's founders originally worked for Altium/Protel before leaving to found the company after Altium's IPO.

Since 2011: Expansion and acquisitions

In 2011, Altium announced it would be expanding its presence in Shanghai, China, in the second half of 2011 to take advantage of lower wages. On October 15, 2012, the Altium board removed Nick Martin as CEO and named executive vice chairman Kayvan Oboudiyat to replace him. On January 16, 2014, Altium announced Kayvan Oboudiyat's retirement and succession by Aram Mirkazemi as CEO. In May of the same year, Altium announced that the core R&D operations for its flagship PCB CAD tools would again relocate in a "cost neutral" move to San Diego, California. In 2015, Altium acquired

Octopart Octopart.com is a search engine for electronic and industrial parts headquartered in La Jolla, CA. It aggregates parts from distributors and manufacturers online, making them easy to search for and purchase. History Octopart was created by thr ...

, a search engine for electronic and industrial parts. The same year, it acquired the cloud-based electronic component management system company Ciiva. Additional acquisitions by the company have included enterprise PLM integration solutions provider Perception Software in 2016 and cloud-based EDA tool company

Upverter Upverter is an Electronic design automation, electronic circuit design system delivered in a web browser, which enables hardware engineers to design, share, and review circuit diagram, schematics and printed circuit boards. It additionally feature ...

in 2017. On 7 June 2021, it was revealed that Altium rejected a bid from

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

, who had already bought the EDA tool

EAGLE Eagle is the common name for the golden eagle, bald eagle, and other birds of prey in the family of the Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. True eagles comprise the genus ''Aquila ( ...

in 2016, valuing the company at . In February 2024,

agreed to acquire Altium for US$5.9 billion.
/ref> The acquisition was completed in August 2024, with Altium becoming a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics.

Products

Altium develops software that is used for designing of electronic products including printed circuit board. Its products are designed for use in a Microsoft Windows environment and used in industries such as automotive, aerospace, defense, and telecommunications.

Altium Designer

Altium Designer is a Printed circuit board, PCB and

software package for

s. It allows engineers to design and customize their own circuit boards. Altium Designer is considered the flagship software of the company.

Autotrax / Easytrax

AutoTRAX is the original Protel PCB design software used for DOS, released in the 1980s.

CircuitMaker

CircuitMaker is

software for

designs targeted at the hobby,

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

, and maker community. CircuitMaker is available as

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

, and the hardware designed with it may be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes without limitations. The first non-beta version was released on January 17, 2016.

Other products

* Altium 365 – electronics product design platform that unites PCB design, MCAD, data management, and teamwork. * Altium Concord Pro – Available as part of Altium enterprise solutions. Single source for component data, real-time sourcing information, component traceability within designs, and collaboration tool. * Altium NEXUS – Available as part of Altium enterprise solutions. Team-based PCB workflow solution designed to provide the transparency. * AltiumLive – the cloud-based community that connects Altium designers, collaborators, suppliers, manufacturers and customers. * Altium Vault – Formal release, re-use and design data management server software. * CircuitStudio – PCB design software tool * NanoBoard – reconfigurable hardware development platform. *

P-CAD P-CAD was the brand name of Personal CAD Systems, Inc., a California-based manufacturer of electronic design automation (EDA) software. It manufactured a CAD software available for personal computers. The company was divested into ACCEL Techno ...

- Obtained through AccelEDA acquisition, retired in 2006. * PDN Analyzer – analyze Power Distribution Network (PDN) voltage and current performance * TASKING – An

embedded system An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is e ...

s software development tool.