Altair Expands Electronic System Design Technology with Acquisition of Concept Engineering

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Altair, a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI), acquired Concept Engineering, the leading provider of electronic system visualization software that accelerates the development, manufacture, and service of complex electrical and electronic systems.

Concept Engineering provides automatic schematic generation tools, electronic circuit and wire harness visualization platforms that provide on-the-fly visual rendering, and electronic design debug solutions.

“Concept Engineering’s advanced, reactive visualization technology is a best-in-class solution to help organizations accelerate their designs that have specific design architecture requirements, as well as rigorous service needs,” said James R. Scapa, founder and chief executive officer, Altair. “Integrating this technology into our electronic system design suite will offer our customers comprehensive and fast visual representations of complex system models and debug capabilities for electronic systems.”

Concept Engineering’s electronic system visualization and semiconductor design debug technology is available as a standalone solution and is also tightly integrated into more than 40 OEM design automation (EDA) and CAD tools to provide end users with smart debugging functionality while saving months of engineering time and support for computer aided tool development teams.

Concept Engineering has customers in three primary market segments:

1. Semiconductor design: Concept Engineering provides innovative electronic design debug solutions, enhancing semiconductor design quality and time to market. These solutions cover electronic systems, register transfer level (RTL), gate, and transistor design abstractions, for both analog and digital disciplines. 
2. EDA and CAD tool development: Concept Engineering’s family of automatic schematic generation and visualization software components help software developers create smart and high-performance debugging cockpits, shorten software tool development cycles, lower software development and maintenance costs, and increase product quality of EDA tools.
3. Industries with complex electrical systems: Concept Engineering provides advanced visualization of electrical circuits, wire harnesses, and components for rapid and reliable development, manufacture, and service for industries that require highly specialized debugging and visualization mechanisms for development and post-production product maintenance. These industries include automotive, aerospace, industrial and robotics, medical, transportation and logistics, and construction and agriculture.

“With more than 30 years of experience, we are proud to have built tools and technologies that help electronic design engineers easily understand, debug, optimize, and document electronic designs,” said Gerhard Angst, president and chief executive officer, Concept Engineering. “Being part of the Altair ecosystem will expand access to our tools at a time when the complexities surrounding electronic systems are greater than ever. We also look forward to continuing our deep and longstanding partnerships with our OEM clients.”

Concept Engineering’s software will be integrated into Altair’s Electronic System Design suite and available via Altair Units, which gives customers easy access to Altair’s entire portfolio of software solutions.