Founded in 2018 CELUS was, in the words of CEO and founder Tobias Pohl, set up to “revolutionise the electronics industry with a new design flow for circuit design and PCB development.”
The company created a platform – the CELUS Design Platform - that’s capable of speeding up and simplifying the development of complex circuit boards and after a soft launch in Europe earlier this year it is now available worldwide.
The platform, which is AI assisted, can suggest options to engineers and help them find the right components for their projects through smart algorithms and the use of machine learning and AI.
The response from the industry has been remarkable, according to Pohl.
“We undertook a soft launch at Embedded World back in March,” Pohl explained, “and to be honest we were really surprised at the reaction we got from engineers. For an industry noted for its scepticism the reaction was positive and our six demo pods were fully booked for the duration of the show.”
According to Pohl that interest highlighted a growing sense of frustration felt by professionals working in the engineering community when it comes to developing new products.
“I think engineers have become increasingly frustrated because due to the time-to-market pressures they are faced with they are making bad choices, they haven’t got the time to consider all the options,” suggested Pohl. “Out platform not only speeds up the design process but because of how quickly it can deliver a solution it’s now possible to create many more iterations of a product and to consider using different parts. By using our platform design engineers are also finding that they are being presented with alternative components that they may not have thought of using – for example, a microcontroller family they’ve not previously come across or even thought of for their application.”
The Design Platform simplifies the design process, but it also helps to accelerate it by transforming technical requirements into schematic prototypes in less than an hour.
The platform is a cloud-based application which allows the engineer to design on his tablet, PC or desktop wherever they carry out their design work. Navigation through the platform has also been designed to be simple and updates to the platform are carried out almost every hour.
“We’re radically accelerating and changing the electronics design process,” said Pohl, “and developers and engineers can bring innovative electronics projects from concept to reality with unprecedented efficiency and precision. At the same time, we’re freeing up component suppliers to focus on innovation and customer engagement.”
The platform allows engineers to exclude certain manufacturers, use preferred components when necessary and to access specific templates if that aids the design. Each user can ask the platform design questions, and the system can then address specific design requirements.
Above: The CELUS Design Platform provides a simple and intuitive interface
Growing interest
The level of interest in CELUS can be demonstrated by the number of customers the company has got in just a matter of months.
“When we launched the product earlier this year we envisaged around 7000 customers by year end,” said Pohl. “We’ve already reached that number and we’re now forecasting almost 14,000 customers by the end of 2024 and it’s global – we have customers in Europe, the US, and in Asia.
“That ability to find the right component is critical especially when you consider the fact that each year millions of new components come onto the market and trillions of dollars in products are distributed. For engineers finding the right component is much like finding the proverbial ‘needle-in-a-haystack’. Finding the correct component can take engineers hours and many smaller companies are simply not getting the support they need – and that is where our platform can help.”
Component suppliers can have their products featured on the CELUS Design Platform which means that they can now more easily connect with engineers and designers for faster market integration, as well as achieving a broader reach.
According to Pohl, “This connection is crucial for component suppliers in reaching the 80% of customers who may not be accessible through traditional channels. CELUS is about enhancing the visibility of components when they are identified as the preferred choice in various design projects.”
The Design Platform streamlines the design process and provides real-time component recommendations that actually work and CELUS is, according to Pohl, committed to transforming the component industry by revolutionising the circuit board design market.
To that end the company is expanding the reach of its Design Platform with the addition of a US headquarters based in Ausin, Texas. It currently maintains offices in Germany and Portugal.
This global expansion is the latest step in helping organisations use engineering time more efficiently.
“The platform is capable of supporting increasingly complex designs. When you think that projects often comprise of anywhere from 200 to 1,000 individual components, our platform simplifies the complexities of design, and it not only selects the ideal set of components it also provides deliverables in terms of architectural design, ECAD native schematics, bill of materials, footprints and a project information summary.”
The CELUS Design Platform is there to handle the heavy lifting and intricate details of product design to drive innovation and expand demand creation in a fraction of the time required of traditional approaches, according to Pohl.
Winning combinations
In the further evolution of the platform CELUS has now integrated cutting-edge solutions and Winning Combination reference designs from Renesas into the Design Platform's growing database.
“This collaboration enriches the CELUS Design Platform with an extensive range of Renesas CUBOs and featured projects, enabling electronic designers to access, evaluate and implement Renesas’ advanced semiconductor solutions more easily,” said Pohl. “These CUBOs contain digital datasheets which contain the schematics, BoMs, footprints and more.”
“This collaboration with CELUS underscores Renesas' commitment to innovation, sustainability and excellence in the semiconductor industry,” said Brad Rex, Senior Director of System Solutions at Renesas. “By leveraging the platform, we want to continue to support the development of next-generation electronics and accelerate advances in key industries such as automotive, industrial and IoT.”
According to Renesas a major benefit from gaining access to the Design Platform is that it provides its internal teams with a strong tool for design and development.
Crucially, this agreement also provides an open line for communication between Renesas and the CELUS team, to maximise the platform's benefits for Renesas' projects.
“Renesas microcontrollers, analogue, power and SoCs are the foundation of many transformative designs for industrial, commercial and consumer electronics,” said Pohl. “These products are significant additions to the CELUS Design Platform and will help to speed time to market for all or our current and future users.”
CELUS has also signed an agreement with Edge Impulse, a platform for building and deploying machine learning models and algorithms to edge devices.
A strategic partnership it looks to combine the two companies’ technologies helping to streamline the design process.
The CELUS Design Platform seems to be winning over many design engineers in the electronics industry and is certainly proving its worth when it comes to the development of new, innovative solutions that address the ever-changing needs of the industry.
