3D PCB design performance benchmarks from Altium

5th January 2009

Altium Limited

ES Admin

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Altium has published a set of benchmarks for 3D PCB design performance using Altium Designer, its next generation electronics design solution. Altium is a pioneer of real-time, 3D PCB design environments, with the introduction of 3D board layouts, real-time 3D ECAD-MCAD collaboration, and now (with the launch of the winter 09 release of Altium Designer) enhanced performance in the PCB design engine. The latest winter 09 release uses less memory and run faster, up to six times faster in some systems.

To help designers exploit the power of 3D PCB design in the most cost-effective way, Altium has completed performance tests of commonly available graphics cards running the winter 09 release of Altium Designer.

Video cards are a critical hardware element to being able to do electronics design, especially PCB layout, in new ways. Different cards also perform at different speeds when running Altium Designer, and it's not the case that the best performers are necessarily the most expensive.

With this set of benchmarks, designers can decide which card best suits their needs and budget.

Altium has also introduced new concepts in the new winter 09 release of Altium Designer to let designers explore new techniques and design possibilities. A new Field Instrumentation dashboard will help designers overcome some of the challenges of testing or remotely monitoring designs inside FPGAs. And a new plug-and-play Software Platform Builder will help designers quickly 'snap' together systems and exploit a standard set of services within the 'soft' hardware environment created inside programmable devices.