3 ms·

A company down the road from me building automotive electronics including for Formula 1, would beg to differ.

OJFord 3y ago
By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. No doubt there's a lot of complexity in F1 electronics, but they certainly have more space, cooling, reasonable environment, etc. to work with than some industries. (Not to disagree that it was dismissive and a lot of serious work gets done with Altium Designer, and for that matter Kicad, of course.)
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. I duuno man, at a startup I worked at, the graybeard EE was doing 2.4GHz RF design on software cheaper and more rudimentary than Altium, let alone Cadence. So I'm always rolling my eyes when someone uses the world "real" as some sort of macho flex with vague meaning like "real men", "real work", "real engineering", "real software development", as if only their particular example makes the world go round and scoff at everything else like it's unimportant child's play.
  - vanchor3 3y ago
    Sure, you can do 2.4GHz on a 2 layer board with even the simplest programs, or even Inkscape really. The hard part is arguably knowing the write math involved to design with signal integrity in mind. When you start working with very high speed things like DDR4/DDR5 on 14 layer boards you could do it with simpler software, but I don't see why you would. The time saved with the design tools and signal integrity simulations would likely be worth much more than the licensing cost, especially if you're bigger than a small hobby shop. Not to mention the money saved on having software that can identify mistakes early on when the PCBs alone can cost thousands. And then there's all the other bits like conforming to standards, providing deliverables in a format that the next place down the line deems "acceptable" (or they're just picky), as interoperability with other teams, because sometimes you're just one small part of the design process.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. Altium has good support for high speed design features. (Source: Have done many high-speed designs in Altium and Allegro) Altium is quite common at tech companies. I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic?
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Oh I know. I was just trying to offer an interpretation. > I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic? Yeah, see my direct reply to them (before my comment above), I honestly don't know.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Not being sarcastic. Altium doesn't even remotely compare to something like Xpedition or Allegro. Mostly I was refuting: > There’s a reason professionals and organizations are paying huge amounts of money for Altium licenses still. Uh, no. They're not actually paying huge amounts--that's part of the reason Altium got bought. Professionals use professional tools--Altium doesn't qualify. I really do not understand what Renesas thinks they are going to get from this. The autorouter is terrible. The constraint mechanisms suck. Co-design with mechanical CAD is poor. Large designs slow it to a crawl. Design sharing is incredibly weak. Source control and database integrations are laughably bad. I can go on and on and on. There are solid reasons why professionals pay an order of magnitude more money for Xpedition and Allegro over Altium. Sure, I have designed high-speed digital as well as high-GHz RF designs in weak PCB products (including both Altium and KiCad)--that's not a badge of honor, though. When time and efficiency actually matters, you put on your big boy boots, suck it up and cough up real money for real tools. > Altium is quite common at tech companies. This is fine. As is using KiCad. 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter.
    - javawizard 3y ago
      It's awfully rich saying: > Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum and: > 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter in the same breath - it really doesn't do your argument any favors. I can't see a world in which only 1% and "anybody who needs real PCB features" are congruent statements.

By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. No doubt there's a lot of complexity in F1 electronics, but they certainly have more space, cooling, reasonable environment, etc. to work with than some industries. (Not to disagree that it was dismissive and a lot of serious work gets done with Altium Designer, and for that matter Kicad, of course.)

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. I duuno man, at a startup I worked at, the graybeard EE was doing 2.4GHz RF design on software cheaper and more rudimentary than Altium, let alone Cadence. So I'm always rolling my eyes when someone uses the world "real" as some sort of macho flex with vague meaning like "real men", "real work", "real engineering", "real software development", as if only their particular example makes the world go round and scoff at everything else like it's unimportant child's play.
- vanchor3 3y ago
  Sure, you can do 2.4GHz on a 2 layer board with even the simplest programs, or even Inkscape really. The hard part is arguably knowing the write math involved to design with signal integrity in mind. When you start working with very high speed things like DDR4/DDR5 on 14 layer boards you could do it with simpler software, but I don't see why you would. The time saved with the design tools and signal integrity simulations would likely be worth much more than the licensing cost, especially if you're bigger than a small hobby shop. Not to mention the money saved on having software that can identify mistakes early on when the PCBs alone can cost thousands. And then there's all the other bits like conforming to standards, providing deliverables in a format that the next place down the line deems "acceptable" (or they're just picky), as interoperability with other teams, because sometimes you're just one small part of the design process.
Aurornis 3y ago
> By 'real electronics' they probably mean high frequency or very high speed designs, a GPU card manufacturer say. Altium has good support for high speed design features. (Source: Have done many high-speed designs in Altium and Allegro) Altium is quite common at tech companies. I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic?
- OJFord 3y ago
  Oh I know. I was just trying to offer an interpretation. > I think maybe the parent commenter was being sarcastic? Yeah, see my direct reply to them (before my comment above), I honestly don't know.
- bsder 3y ago
  Not being sarcastic. Altium doesn't even remotely compare to something like Xpedition or Allegro. Mostly I was refuting: > There’s a reason professionals and organizations are paying huge amounts of money for Altium licenses still. Uh, no. They're not actually paying huge amounts--that's part of the reason Altium got bought. Professionals use professional tools--Altium doesn't qualify. I really do not understand what Renesas thinks they are going to get from this. The autorouter is terrible. The constraint mechanisms suck. Co-design with mechanical CAD is poor. Large designs slow it to a crawl. Design sharing is incredibly weak. Source control and database integrations are laughably bad. I can go on and on and on. There are solid reasons why professionals pay an order of magnitude more money for Xpedition and Allegro over Altium. Sure, I have designed high-speed digital as well as high-GHz RF designs in weak PCB products (including both Altium and KiCad)--that's not a badge of honor, though. When time and efficiency actually matters, you put on your big boy boots, suck it up and cough up real money for real tools. > Altium is quite common at tech companies. This is fine. As is using KiCad. 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter.
  - javawizard 3y ago
    It's awfully rich saying: > Anybody who needs real PCB features isn't using Alitum and: > 99% of companies are not doing anything complex enough for it to matter in the same breath - it really doesn't do your argument any favors. I can't see a world in which only 1% and "anybody who needs real PCB features" are congruent statements.