Renesas to buy Altium

[tszaboo]

30-year+ Protel/Altium user here - started with Protel 2, coming from Tango and Orcad just before the latter ported to Windows. I recall the non-optional FPGA IDE effort in the late 2000s; new licenses jumped from $2K to $4K, and I don’t recall anyone asking for that feature, given that the chip producers were all giving away their own IDEs.

They didn't, it was Nick Martins future vision of electronics design, everything would be FPGA. Hence the entire company shift to focus on FPGA and modual electronics and the infamous making of the PCB tool optional extra, because, well, only advanced users would need to design their own boards. They bet the farm on that concept and lost.

I heard the story before, but it still amazes me, the stupidity of that concept. The typical reaction of every experienced engineer to FPGAs is either:
A) That they are to expensive, power hungry, and if you can really prove me that there is no chance to do the project without it, then I'll place one on the board
B) I get to play with toys, and get to spend as much time mucking around with things as I want, since nobody will understand what I'm actually doing.

[NF6X]

FPGAs are quite useful. But even if they were the right tool for every job (they aren't!), the thought that nobody would need to design their own PCBs when using them is absurd. There's a world of difference between a development board vs. a finished product.

[ejeffrey]

30-year+ Protel/Altium user here - started with Protel 2, coming from Tango and Orcad just before the latter ported to Windows. I recall the non-optional FPGA IDE effort in the late 2000s; new licenses jumped from $2K to $4K, and I don’t recall anyone asking for that feature, given that the chip producers were all giving away their own IDEs.

They didn't, it was Nick Martins future vision of electronics design, everything would be FPGA. Hence the entire company shift to focus on FPGA and modual electronics and the infamous making of the PCB tool optional extra, because, well, only advanced users would need to design their own boards. They bet the farm on that concept and lost.

No surprise there. How was he planning on getting around the ultra secret & proprietary routing & placing algorithms? Without those, you might be able to setup a fancy HDL editing and simulation system but certainly not an all-in-one development platform like the FPGA vendors typically provide.

I don't want to pretend I understand, but I imagine it would still use the vendor synthesis and place and route tools.  Think like Arduino for FPGAs which has its own libraries, bootloader, and module API but in the end just calls the gcc toolchain.  You have your high level development environment and you tell it which modules you have snapped together and it creates instantiation templates, builds initializationogic, and distributes the resulting binaries to the right targets.

It's not a bad idea. Pynq kind of works like this, and it's probably something we could use more and better tools for.  It's just not a replacement for or obsoleting of PCB CAD tools.

[Someone]

FPGAs are quite useful. But even if they were the right tool for every job (they aren't!), the thought that nobody would need to design their own PCBs when using them is absurd. There's a world of difference between a development board vs. a finished product.

The PCB license was the most expensive, as the number of hardware users is usually much smaller than the FPGA/software users. The code and FPGA schematic integration was a nifty system and well ahead of its time, but far too expensive for the benefits.

[NF6X]

Did they literally think that PCB design was going to become obsolete, or just that they would sell a lot more FPGA design licenses than PCB layout licenses? I thought that Dave had previously stated that it was the former, but I might misremember that.

[Bud]

I'm not sure how Altium can compete with Kicad within a few years. Looking forward: Kicad version 8 or 9 can do everything a small business needs for PCB design & the logistics side of assembling boards.

And Kicad now has their version of Redhat...  https://www.kipro-pcb.com/about-us/

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support. Now, this is why what they say in the above link makes sense and should be Kicad's team strategic offering and bread and butter. However, if that happens and becomes a success, sure thing it will end up someone making them an offer and the guys cashing the tool out for their retirement tickets and the world will be back to square one.

[SiliconWizard]

To be fair, KiCad does offer contractual support I think, if you pay for it. But one issue is that KiCad is still a very small structure. And the budget of the dev team is absolutely ridiculous compared to Altium. Thing is, if one day they become as big as Altium, I'm afraid we may not like as much the direction it will take. (Mozilla, anyone?)

Feature-wise, KiCad is still a long way from AD, and I'm saying that while using it almost exclusively now, but it wouldn't fit all environments. I certainly now recommend it for small to medium companies that are starting and don't have legacy designs to support.

[Karel]

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support.

KiCad does offer contractual support:

https://www.kicad.org/help/professional-support/

https://www.kipro-pcb.com/

[tszaboo]

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support. Now, this is why what they say in the above link makes sense and should be Kicad's team strategic offering and bread and butter. However, if that happens and becomes a success, sure thing it will end up someone making them an offer and the guys cashing the tool out for their retirement tickets and the world will be back to square one.

Or rather, there are a lot of engineers that have 10K hours of experience in AD, and they have built up libraries to use, that also takes a lot of time. Who is going to pay for all the engineers to gain the same experience? Let's say it only takes 1000 hour to be able to use KiCAD almost as effectively, just multiply it with your wage.
Include opportunity cost.
Include prototypes that have to be scrapped because you used a new software and made a mistake.

[harerod]

...Or rather, there are a lot of engineers that have 10K hours of experience in AD, and they have built up libraries to use, that also takes a lot of time. Who is going to pay for all the engineers to gain the same experience? Let's say it only takes 1000 hour to be able to use KiCAD almost as effectively, just multiply it with your wage.
Include opportunity cost.
Include prototypes that have to be scrapped because you used a new software and made a mistake.

Thank you for repeating the prime argument, why people stay with their tools and why any mission critical tool should not be dependent on anything cloud- or subscription-based, e.g. corruptable by outside interference. 
And no, I am not exactly proud about still being stuck with EAGLE V7 in 2024. Its only merit is that it does the job for my small fry projects.

[delfinom]

I'm not sure how Altium can compete with Kicad within a few years. Looking forward: Kicad version 8 or 9 can do everything a small business needs for PCB design & the logistics side of assembling boards.

And Kicad now has their version of Redhat...  https://www.kipro-pcb.com/about-us/

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support. Now, this is why what they say in the above link makes sense and should be Kicad's team strategic offering and bread and butter. However, if that happens and becomes a success, sure thing it will end up someone making them an offer and the guys cashing the tool out for their retirement tickets and the world will be back to square one.

KiCad is poison-pilled. Not only is it GPLed, the name is held as a trademark by The Linux Foundation

[NF6X]

At $DayJob, our Altium rep is trying to get us to buy a perpetual license. I get the impression that he may be motivated less by our interests and more by his commission?

[Jamieson]

Yeah, the push to deeply integrate FPGA tools into Altium didn't make any sense to me either. I don't want to use Altium to write and simulate my firmware designs. I've got better tools for that.

It is nice to be able to define equivalent pin groups in Altium, so I can swap GPIO pins when routing to make layout cleaner. I think that is handled well within Altium, if you spend the time to set it up. Then as you approach the FPGA footprint in manual route mode the other equivalent pins start to glow. However, propagating the pin swap changes back the FPGA tool constraints file still seems like a manual process.

[jc101]

These days a perpetual licence is limited by the subscription level too.  Quite a few people with a permanent licence, who have been in Standard subscription and finding features vanishing when updates come out.  Specifically multi-board support, now part of the Pro subscription, has been removed from those who had it before.  Plus, if you don't continue the subscription, don't expect the features you had at the time will continue to work.  They want the revenue stream, users be dammed.

Quite a stink brewing on the Altium forum about that.

[NF6X]

Or rather, there are a lot of engineers that have 10K hours of experience in AD, and they have built up libraries to use, that also takes a lot of time. Who is going to pay for all the engineers to gain the same experience? Let's say it only takes 1000 hour to be able to use KiCAD almost as effectively, just multiply it with your wage.
Include opportunity cost.
Include prototypes that have to be scrapped because you used a new software and made a mistake.

Yes, I agree. That's a good reason to stick with any working tool unless there's a very compelling reason to change. I don't see established Altium users switching over to KiCad (or any other competitor) in the short term at any significant rate, unless Renasas really screws things up. I do expect to see KiCad's market share in small shops slowly increasing over time, as KiCad continues to improve and more new engineers come online without a large investment into any specific tool. Of course, Renesas would be wise to encourage college students to use Altium Designer so they start their careers with an affinity towards using it.

These days a perpetual licence is limited by the subscription level too.  Quite a few people with a permanent licence, who have been in Standard subscription and finding features vanishing when updates come out.  Specifically multi-board support, now part of the Pro subscription, has been removed from those who had it before.  Plus, if you don't continue the subscription, don't expect the features you had at the time will continue to work.  They want the revenue stream, users be dammed.

Quite a stink brewing on the Altium forum about that.

When we made our initial purchase of 2 seats of Altium last year, my boss opted against us going for the perpetual license. Not only was it poison-pilled as you describe, but we didn't want to dump that much cash up front. It seemed that their cost structure was geared towards encouraging subscription licenses over perpetual licenses in order to give Altium a steady cash flow. So, I've been a bit surprised at our sales rep pushing perpetual licenses. I get the impression that he's more interested in his commission/bonus than our best interests.

The Renesas purchase announcement doesn't affect my personal decision to continue using KiCad, unless I hit a roadblock where I really need an AD feature that KiCad doesn't support well to complete a project, I take on a consulting client who demands their design to be done in Altium, etc. But I find it interesting to talk about even as a mostly non-Altium user.

[nctnico]

Or rather, there are a lot of engineers that have 10K hours of experience in AD, and they have built up libraries to use, that also takes a lot of time. Who is going to pay for all the engineers to gain the same experience? Let's say it only takes 1000 hour to be able to use KiCAD almost as effectively, just multiply it with your wage.
Include opportunity cost.
Include prototypes that have to be scrapped because you used a new software and made a mistake.

Yes, I agree. That's a good reason to stick with any working tool unless there's a very compelling reason to change.

Licensing costs can be a good reason to change. It is not unheard of that entire companies switch from one CAD to the other despite going through a learning curve. And realistically, a decent engineer should become productive within 100 hours and proficient within 300 hours of use (and these hours aren't wasted as designs will be made). If somebody needs 1000 hours to learn how to be productive with a piece of software, it is time for that person to switch careers. Also as an engineer you need to think about what that $10k Altium license your boss buys for you could do for you as part of a raise in salary.

[Ice-Tea]

These days a perpetual licence is limited by the subscription level too.  Quite a few people with a permanent licence, who have been in Standard subscription and finding features vanishing when updates come out.  Specifically multi-board support, now part of the Pro subscription, has been removed from those who had it before.  Plus, if you don't continue the subscription, don't expect the features you had at the time will continue to work.  They want the revenue stream, users be dammed.

Quite a stink brewing on the Altium forum about that.

Last time I checked standard licenses would be locked to a location as well. That's a "fuck no" from me.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I'm not sure how Altium can compete with Kicad within a few years. Looking forward: Kicad version 8 or 9 can do everything a small business needs for PCB design & the logistics side of assembling boards.

And Kicad now has their version of Redhat...  https://www.kipro-pcb.com/about-us/

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support.

What is the biggest risk in practice ?
A proprietory tool that the manufacturer may bork in some way at any time (more so if it's subscription based), or an open tool where you are guaranteed to be able to run a specific version for ever, as well as potentially find and fix bugs yourself if necessary?

[NF6X]

I think the argument that big companies would hesitate to use a tool like KiCad without a company behind it has merit. But on the other hand, big companies use FOSS tools like GCC.

[nctnico]

I think the argument that big companies would hesitate to use a tool like KiCad without a company behind it has merit. But on the other hand, big companies use FOSS tools like GCC.

And how about the huge amounts of companies running Linux on their products?

[NF6X]

Good point. Some of them even comply with the license terms! 

[tom66]

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support. Now, this is why what they say in the above link makes sense and should be Kicad's team strategic offering and bread and butter. However, if that happens and becomes a success, sure thing it will end up someone making them an offer and the guys cashing the tool out for their retirement tickets and the world will be back to square one.

Or rather, there are a lot of engineers that have 10K hours of experience in AD, and they have built up libraries to use, that also takes a lot of time. Who is going to pay for all the engineers to gain the same experience? Let's say it only takes 1000 hour to be able to use KiCAD almost as effectively, just multiply it with your wage.
Include opportunity cost.
Include prototypes that have to be scrapped because you used a new software and made a mistake.

Libraries are one thing, but KiCAD already allows import of third party libraries (though the process isn't super smooth, it can be scripted - probably an area to improve upon.)

But the idea that you are throwing 1000 hours at learning KiCAD?  No, I don't believe so.  Most of that effort is getting experienced with a generic PCB layout process, you can apply that to most tools.  KiCAD isn't that different to Altium in its basic operations which is what 90% of your time with the tool is spent doing.

Also, if Altium costs ~$10k to license, plus whatever annual maintenance costs there are, then there is a huge opportunity cost on that licensing fee that a megacorp could save on.  Even if it means sending engineers away for a refresher course on Altium.  We pay our PCB contractor ~$70 USD per hour (GB wages), so such a course would need to take more than 4 weeks to break even (perhaps even more so for an in-house employee.)

A major reason we're not using KiCAD yet is most of our layout work is contracted out and it's hard to find KiCAD PCB engineers.  For us it's too infrequent to justify hiring a full time engineer for PCBs, but a bit too specialised to have that skill in enough in-house engineers.    But as the popularity of the tool grows I imagine this will be less of an issue.

Edit: typo

[NF6X]

Well, I'm planning to cut the cord at my day job sometime this year and become an independent consultant, so there will be one more KiCad PCB engineer available soon. But my rate will be quite a bit higher than the rate you mentioned, because I'll be putting myself out there as a very senior one-stop-shopping EE consultant.

[EEVblog]

Kicad taking over Altium is talking nonsense, because no sane big company would use a tool which is core to their business without contractual support.

That is why the KiCAD Services Corporation was formed.
https://www.kipro-pcb.com/

[NF6X]

Do we know anything about how much business they have received? Have any companies publicized working with them?