Curiosity is always good, and thanks for the compliments. Responses to your questions in order:
- We follow DFM/DFX very well. It's a strength of an automated system that you can make strong guarantees on the designs that come out of the tool. A board design that cannot be manufactured is useless, and our boards are guaranteed manufacturable.
- We rarely follow explicit layout guidelines, and instead determine electrical constraints and solve for a design that meets them. The switching regulator layout in the data sheet rarely fits well in any given floorplan. Better to make sure the physics are right than to encode rigid (and potentially arbitrary) constraints.
- See above. We don't copy/paste - we solve for the layout that fits, subject to electrical constraints.
- More of a lack of user constraints. Space makes good neighbours of electrical components, and makes testing/characterization easier. When size isn't critical, the optimal design is more spaced out.
- Layout is deterministic, and board revs are pretty smooth when all you have to do is edit the source code.
We're not looking for an acquisition. Luckily for you, we don't have to be acquired by Altium to write a plugin for their tool. Our competition are electrical engineers grinding out work that they don't want to be doing anyway.
- We follow DFM/DFX very well. It's a strength of an automated system that you can make strong guarantees on the designs that come out of the tool. A board design that cannot be manufactured is useless, and our boards are guaranteed manufacturable.
- We rarely follow explicit layout guidelines, and instead determine electrical constraints and solve for a design that meets them. The switching regulator layout in the data sheet rarely fits well in any given floorplan. Better to make sure the physics are right than to encode rigid (and potentially arbitrary) constraints.
- See above. We don't copy/paste - we solve for the layout that fits, subject to electrical constraints.
- More of a lack of user constraints. Space makes good neighbours of electrical components, and makes testing/characterization easier. When size isn't critical, the optimal design is more spaced out.
- Layout is deterministic, and board revs are pretty smooth when all you have to do is edit the source code.
We're not looking for an acquisition. Luckily for you, we don't have to be acquired by Altium to write a plugin for their tool. Our competition are electrical engineers grinding out work that they don't want to be doing anyway.