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>Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead. Intel had been fabbing (some of?) Altera
by mastax 10y ago
>Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead.
Intel had been fabbing (some of?) Altera's chips for a few years before the acquisition, so from this angle it makes more sense than Xilinx. As to why Altera had this partnership and not Xilinx, who knows. Perhaps being in second place motivates you to shake things up.
- totalZero 10y agoMy understanding is that Intel has a service called Intel Custom Foundry that gives smaller partner companies access to Intel's fabrication pipeline. Altera was a client of Intel Custom Foundry, and the two companies started to build some FPGA-accelerated x86 products together, so it was a pretty natural acquisition versus a potential Xilinx deal.
- friendzis 10y agoFrom my own experience Altera floods education/research facilities with free-or-cheap developement boards and tools compared to Xilinx. Much like Atmel or Microsoft itself. Microsoft already has large programs to grow users for their software and Altera is more suitable in this regard.