![]() This was the last release made by Altium, who retired the product in favor of Altium Designer. The last version of P-CAD was P-CAD 2006 with Service Pack 2, released in 2006. The P-CAD product included schematic capture, component library management, PCB layout and routing, parametric constraint solver and auto-routing capability. But with significantly more performance than the Quadro M2000 it replaces, this latest addition to the so-called mid-range segment of the pro GPU market is starting to muscle in on the traditional stomping ground of Nvidia’s ‘4000’ class GPUs. A few years later, the P-CAD group was divested by selling to ACCEL Technologies, an EDA software corporation from San Diego, California, which was acquired by Protel International Pty Ltd (now Altium) in 2000. Nvidia’s ‘2000’ class GPUs have long been the sweet spot for 3D CAD. At the time of acquisition, P-CAD had an installed base of over 100,000 end users, a record at that time. In 1989, P-CAD was acquired by Cadam, which was a subsidiary of Lockheed, but was in the process of being sold to IBM. Its single biggest customer was Texas Instruments. P-CAD's flagship products included schematic capture, logic simulation and PCB layout. At that time, Cadence was just being formed with the merger of ECAD and SGA, and Synopsys was being founded as a new start up. At that time, P-CAD was the most prolific EDA company as measured by its user base, easily surpassing established CAD companies such as Autotrol, Calma, Intergraph, Daisy, Mentor, Cadnetix, CAE Systems, ECAD, SDA Systems, etc. P-CAD went on to become the company with the biggest installed base of users of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), with over 10,000 users by 1988. The company originally raised US$500,000 from CrossPoint Venture Partners, and US$3,000,000 in a second round from New Enterprise Associates and Robertson, Coleman and Stephens. The vision of the company was to disrupt the existing hegemony of $250,000 CAD systems based on mainframe computers and custom workstations, and make electronic CAD available to the masses at a cost under $10,000. P-CAD was a play on personal computers, which were just becoming popular, following the launch of the IBM PC. Also, part of the founding team were Gregory Houston, VP Marketing, a former Calma executive, and Chi-Song Horng, Director of software engineering (later promoted as a Vice President), a former AMI software engineering manager. ![]() (AMI), a custom semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. Both were former executives of American Microsystems, Inc. This publication provides guidelines and tips for creating a library of elements, drawing of electrical circuits and PCB design software tools P-CAD 2000. Personal CAD Systems was founded in 1982 by Richard Nedbal and Roy Prasad.
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