ATINA?

[Miles Teg]

Hello,

Seen on bugcrunch about the 64bits support request, some official words from Altium boards about a new high end product in development for some years.

The 18th November communication:
http://www.aspecthuntley.com.au/asxdata/20161118/pdf/01803314.pdf

How do you think the switch will de done?
Change in pricing? Near abadon of Altium Designer?

[Ice-Tea]

There's talk about a high(er) end package that would support 64-bit. In which case the current subscription users would be royaly shafted. 

[aylons]

There's talk about a high(er) end package that would support 64-bit. In which case the current subscription users would be royaly shafted. 

Atina is not only a talk, it is official (you can see it in this presentation, for example), and it will be the high-end, while Altium will be kept in the same spot it is right now.

So, yeah, you may call it "being shafted", if you expected them to give a full upgrade to Altium users, but if you already pay for Altium as it is, you most probably like it. And they are promising to keep developing and maintaining it as a middle-end product.

There was a direct answer about this on reddit:

Rest assured that the dev arc of Altium Designer is still very robust, continuous, and unaffected. These two products serve different markets and this will round out our offering with CircuitMaker/CircuitStudio servicing the start up lower end of the market, Altium Designer servicing the mainstream and Atina servicing the high-end. As Altium Designer is our mainstream offering, that implies that this is where the majority of the commercial users are. So, very much still developed. As for information, look for glimpses very soon. However, we have been talking about this via our public investor meetings for sometime.

[Ice-Tea]

There's talk about a high(er) end package that would support 64-bit. In which case the current subscription users would be royaly shafted. 

So, yeah, you may call it "being shafted", if you expected them to give a full upgrade to Altium users, but if you already pay for Altium as it is, you most probably like it. And they are promising to keep developing and maintaining it as a middle-end product.

I expect a product I pay 1k5$ a year for maintenance for to support multi-core and 64-bit. Failing that, I would like to see it on the horizon somewhere. The message that that will never happen is hard to understand. 64-bit has been around for 15 years. Me expecting full support for those features is justified for a mid-range product. Hell, it is warranted for a low end product.

[aylons]

Yeah, I understand the feeling.

But let's face it: it's been 15 years now and people are still paying for Altium with all its cripples. Most people don't really need the 64-bit, multi-core, etc features, as it seems, and they want people who actually need it to foot the bill to completely rewrite the software (after all, the current Delphi codebase is not compatible with any of these features).

[Bud]

"High End", dont you guys think that will be out of reach for 99.9999% of who is posting here...

[Miles Teg]

Don't know what is the ratio between hobbyist and professionals.
but I'm on the professionals side, who negociate this year a 3 years maintenance for AD.

And I was hoping AD making deep changes.
For the 64bits, I'm only indirectly interested by it, in the way of this imply to go over delphi and refactor the goo around a more moderne and !!!-*STABLE*-!!! language/compiler.

Even as professionnal, I will maybe not need the ATINA functions and capacities, but make me sad to miss the real progress and stay on a barely patched software.

Or maybe one day they will downgrade the Atina to Altium Designer and make their core engine common.

That's a lot of suppositions...

[Ice-Tea]

Most people don't really need the 64-bit, multi-core, etc features...

I'm going to disagree here... If they could speed up polygon pours using multiple cores, I would use it daily. Hourly. Like, right now... Pretty sure anyone above the hobbyist level (and they won't be buying) has a need for that.

[aylons]

Most people don't really need the 64-bit, multi-core, etc features...

I'm going to disagree here... If they could speed up polygon pours using multiple cores, I would use it daily. Hourly. Like, right now... Pretty sure anyone above the hobbyist level (and they won't be buying) has a need for that.

I'm not a fan of the current Altium, and I don't disagree that it could be better.

On the other hand, if I really needed this, I'd probably shell out some money on another tool. They probably are thinking on trying to get this money while keeping Altium in the sweet spot of revenue/development costs.

[DerekG]

I just smile as posters here complain about Altium's multitude of problems.

I made the switch to Proteus & DipTrace several years ago & have never looked back.

I still use Altium for legacy boards & for the several companies (I contract to) that demand it, but each time I do, my decision to leave Altium as my mainstay design package is reinforced.

Keep the complaints coming. I love to just sit in my office chair & smile.

Looking at it from another angle, Altium have thousands of shareholders who are demanding a return on their investment. PCB design software is not a lot different to (say) a word processing package. In the 1990's great advances were being made in both word processing & PCB design software which meant users were eager to upgrade. But little has changed in the past 5 to 10 years, so there is little to excite users to upgrade. Altium is feeling the current economic downturn & are trying to keep their shareholders happy with yet another "this is what we have planned for the future" presentation.

[Miles Teg]

Sorry Derek but I'm a little bit disapointed by your "enjoy your tears" speaking.
As I was working previously on Diptrace during 18months I have lot of respect for it, (bought a full licence) and don't hesitate to recommend it to hobbyist or job people with reasonnable projects to achieve. And depending hobby or student project recommend CircuitMaker also.
I left Diptrace when it was 2.4 and needed to make project on 0.6 BGA and later routing DDR. I had also to work jointly with Chinese design house and exchange library and projects with them. Altium was certainly the good bet for my business.

You show that you know PCB software choice is a mix between your projects needs, your habits with software ergonomy (I CANT touch Eagle!) and your business ecosystem.
So littly trolling at us, people like me who fight to get budget for such software and fighting to get the most of our bucks from Altium is little bit unfair.

Altium Designer is not BAD! For every PCB software there is the love and hate.
And I think it is legit for us, expensive professional software buyers (like for solidworks) to claim the most and the best from companies like Altium.

I would welcome more your speaking if you bring it more in a "you can be more pragmatic and efficient" like in the chinese way.
I'm curious to check improvement in Diptrace 3.0 (and would like to continue promote this Ukranian team), but for now I don't know how I should achieved my last PCB projects without AD.
I will be pleased to discuss this with you, but that's maybe a little bit out topic here.

See you soon on EEV blog forum. Sincerily.

[tszaboo]

I wish this would go away. They can charge money for plugins, like they do with the PDN analyzer. But another product? Who is going to buy it? Like, "I have an Altium license, but lets thow 10.000 dollars at them, maybe this time they add features, that matter. Like FPGA development. "

[DerekG]

I'm curious to check improvement in Diptrace 3.0 (and would like to continue promote this Ukranian team)

A group of us have been working with Novarm (the owners & developers of DipTrace) to really push along its features this past 18 months.

For instance, you can now allocate your own keyboard shortcuts in Ver3+ to replicate many of those in Altium. This makes the switch for those who perhaps are using an older version of Altium fairly stress free.

The libraries have seen huge improvements in Ver3+ - and they needed to as the previous library handling was pitiful. You can now search all libraries using wildcards & partial part numbers. Results are normally displayed within several seconds.

The auto-placer & auto-router have also had a lot of code improvement, so much so that I now use both very regularly.

Also version 3+ sees large improvements in 3D modelling & Step imports.

More & more of the design work is now being done in the USA due to the unstable conditions that now exist in Ukraine.

Don't get me wrong, I like Proteus too. Labcenter however have little interest in supporting import & export filters which makes their designs "propitiatory" & "locked in". DipTrace support a number of import & export filters including PCAD 2006 which can be directly used within Altium with excellent results.

I will be pleased to discuss this with you, but that's maybe a little bit out topic here.

Send me a private message & feel free to ask whatever you like, or feel free to start a new thread.

PS: Ver3+ now has tuned length for high frequency memory layouts ............ something that Ver2 let you down.

[janekm]

There's talk about a high(er) end package that would support 64-bit. In which case the current subscription users would be royaly shafted. 

So, yeah, you may call it "being shafted", if you expected them to give a full upgrade to Altium users, but if you already pay for Altium as it is, you most probably like it. And they are promising to keep developing and maintaining it as a middle-end product.

I expect a product I pay 1k5$ a year for maintenance for to support multi-core and 64-bit. Failing that, I would like to see it on the horizon somewhere. The message that that will never happen is hard to understand. 64-bit has been around for 15 years. Me expecting full support for those features is justified for a mid-range product. Hell, it is warranted for a low end product.

While that's true enough, it actually makes sense that Altium Designer would not get such features straight away. A new product line can be built from the ground up with different user interface, shortcuts, workflows etc. AD users would scream bloody murder if such changes were made to their daily tool, not to mention losing features initially until they are added back in.

Altium may or may not have a plan to back-port the core engine to Altium Designer from ATINA but I wouldn't expect that to be a quick process.

[EEVblog]

Rest assured that the dev arc of Altium Designer is still very robust, continuous, and unaffected. These two products serve different markets and this will round out our offering with CircuitMaker/CircuitStudio servicing the start up lower end of the market, Altium Designer servicing the mainstream and Atina servicing the high-end. As Altium Designer is our mainstream offering, that implies that this is where the majority of the commercial users are. So, very much still developed. As for information, look for glimpses very soon. However, we have been talking about this via our public investor meetings for sometime.

[/quote]

They would not be lying about that.
Altium Designer is the vast majority of Altium's income, without that they cease to exist.
Altium have done some crazy things, but not that crazy as to discontinue AD, or to let it lapse etc.
Atina is shooting for the Cadence/mentor market, and it will be a very tough nut to crack. Those customers don't change willy-nilly, and new customers will be hard to get, expect it to be very low volume.
They are just trying to complete the pyramid, their investors expect that crap, they have to show they are chasing market growth and new segments. The presentations are clearly pointing towards an uptapped high end market which means they can justify spending $xxM developing it.

[BMF]

Any guesses about when this year ATINA might be announced?

[tszaboo]

Any guesses about when this year ATINA might be announced?

I hope never. I dont like my top of the line software being pushed mid range.

[ajawamnet]

Atina is shooting for the Cadence/mentor market, and it will be a very tough nut to crack. Those customers don't change willy-nilly, and new customers will be hard to get, expect it to be very low volume.

The issue is that Cadence gives away Orcad and the Allegro/PCB Editor to most of their clients. Their gig is chip tools that cost big bucks. I own both and the help file for PCB Editor (which is really Allegro since they killed Orcad Layout) contains a lot of references to APD and other chip layout tools.

As someone mentioned

I wish this would go away. They can charge money for plugins, like they do with the PDN analyzer. But another product? Who is going to buy it? Like, "I have an Altium license, but lets thow 10.000 dollars at them, maybe this time they add features, that matter. Like FPGA development.

They like to try and add value via marketing points. I recall telling them that FPGA's (recall "Honey I Shrunk the Board!") was hearding cats.

As was embedded coding. The coders I work with that are worth a shit rarely even use an IDE; it's VI/EMACS and make files on Linux, even for ARM M (non-mmu) stuff.

My guess - they are positioning themselves to be bought by Dassault - just like Mentor did to attract Siemens. The whole ECAD-MCAD thing.

What all of them should really do is to do a paradigm shift in manufacturing - get away from separate processes for electrical and mechanical.

The PCB is almost 100 years old - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board

Time to move on - see my rant that was published a few years back by PCD&F in Voice of the Designer - originally was posted here on my colleague's site:
http://www.fast-product-development.com/electronic_packaging_idea.html
http://pcdandf.com/pcdesign/index.php/2012-archive-articles/8193-voice-of-the-designer

[julianhigginson]

What makes me uneasy about ATINA is that when I bough altium designer, I bought a top of range tool. They don't have any kind of product roadmap, and bugfixes are pretty random.. BUT. it was meant to be a top of the line offering, so I trust that they will do the right thing and keep it capable of doing cutting edge stuff if I need it (like say the huge change for board design that allowed detailed flex PCB definiotions in the CAD editor when flex PCBS started becoming  a thing that more people did, like the new recent tool for specifying the backdrilling of particular vias. Like the production documentation stuff.)

Now it's not going to be their top product, I'm not sure I can trust them to keep putting their best ideas into altium. Surely ATINA can't just be altium designer with a 64 bit code rewrite?

So if they want to keep me subscribing they are going to have to do a LOT to convince me they are going to stay worth the subscription fees. Think proper product roadmap, and start demonstrating a dedication to properly hitting roadmap schedules.

[ehughes]

I will probably be upgrading to Atina.      My last design brought Altium to it's knees....     I was consistently at the memory limit.

From the investor presentations it appears that multi board design (like Zuken) is on the table.    That will be a welcome feature if you are doing complicated stacks. Apparently the 3d engine is reworked and it will be much easier to become a cross platform product as it will not be 100% tied to DirectX

My guess is that Atina will be a separate product with a much high price tag.  Altium will remain as the mid-level product.

[treecatt]

According to my account representative AD18 is 64 bit. Road show by Altium management in late May so we'll find out for sure then. Expect them to wax poetic over Atina mostly though.

[Bud]

Yes and I guess in spirit of the latest stupid trends in "user interface" development it will be "smart phone friendly". Cant wait to see it.

[julianhigginson]

I heard a *really* nice rumour about Atina project today.... It's possible Altium are seeing some sense, and AD18 is going to be Atina.
If this is true, I'll be very happy.


(Though at the same time, now I'm worried all my shortcuts and menu locations I know so well will change, like the way circuitstudio works, or something... probably makes more sense to do something like this and making altium's interface consistent instead of a pile of inconsistent historical hacks will pay off in long term productivity after a bit of short term puzzlement. but.... )

[Mechatrommer]

I made the switch to Proteus & DipTrace several years ago & have never looked back.

funnily DipTrace was my first favourite eda, i made few hobby projects with it, but some limitation made me searched for better option, i tried proteus iirc, eagle, kicad, circuit maker etc and altium. Altium is much much better option than anything else. its few decades ahead, or to be more precise, altium is current, the rest low end eda are few decades behind, including Diptrace which is not far off from Kicad and Eagle (kicad is advancing like cern warp space now so watch out paid diptrace folks).

features not avail in diptrace to name a few... alternate schematics view, alternate footprints, filled polygon schematics, interactive routing, linked datasheet and supplier list etc, not to mention integrated UI for all footprint, component library, schematics and pcb. those features, it seems will be realized only in few decades to come in DipTrace since from time to time i tried downloading DipTrace update. to my dismay, nothing much changed. the worst part, my earlier project cant be opened with latest version, it proved the developers are not very experienced in professional application development. now i used Altium, turning back to Diptrace is a big NO.

otoh Altium is not without weaknesses, mostly i can get around, one thing that i dont expect happening in today's world is its poor drawing performance in schematic (2D) editor, this is not supposed to happen so i dont know what happened with those Altium champions.

[ajb]

According to my account representative AD18 is 64 bit. Road show by Altium management in late May so we'll find out for sure then.

I just got that in an email as well.  Of course the same email told me that we really need to renew right now because our subscription expires today (it doesn't), so who knows.