Altium Limited is an American - Australian multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia 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, defense, and telecommunications. Its flagship product, Altium Designer, is a software for unified electronics design.
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 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-based printed circuit board (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 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, routing (EDA), testing, analysis and FPGA design.
In 1991, Protel released Advanced Schematic/PCB 1.0 for Windows, the world's first Windows-based PCB design system.