Altera

Last updated
Altera Corporation
Company type Subsidiary
Industry Integrated circuits
FoundedJune 1983;40 years ago (June 1983)
Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
Key people
Sandra L. Rivera (CEO)
Shannon J. Poulin (COO)
Products FPGAs
CPLDs
Embedded systems
ASICs
RevenueIncrease2.svg $1.932 billion (2014)
Increase2.svg $472 million (2014)
Total assets Decrease2.svg $5.674 billion (2014)
Total equity Decrease2.svg $3.285 billion (2014)
Number of employees
3,091 (2014)
Parent Intel
Website altera.com
Footnotes /references
[1]

Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015 before becoming independent once again in 2024 as a company focused on development of Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology and system on a chip FPGAs.

Contents

The company was founded in 1983 by semiconductor veterans Rodney Smith, Robert Hartmann, James Sansbury, and Paul Newhagen with $500,000 in seed money. The name of the company was a play on "alterable", the type of chips the company created. In 1988, Altera became a public company via an initial public offering (IPO). [2]

On December 28, 2015, the company was acquired by Intel and became a newly formed business unit called Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). [3] In October 2023, Intel announced it would be spinning off PSG into a separate company at the start of 2024, while maintaining majority ownership and intending to seek an IPO within three years. [4] [5] In February 2024, Intel announced that the newly independent company would reestablish the Altera name and branding. [6]

Products

FPGAs

Cyclone III FPGA Mainboard-fb4ceiling (14309408349) Cyclone III (cropped).jpg
Cyclone III FPGA
FPGA Developer-board with Altera Cyclone V SE FPGA Embedded World 2016, Altera Cyclone-V SE (02).jpg
FPGA Developer-board with Altera Cyclone V SE FPGA
Die shot of an Altera Max II FPGA. Altera MAX II die shot - etched - stitched (33460784978).jpg
Die shot of an Altera Max II FPGA.

The main product lines from Altera are the Agilex FPGA product lines, and their predecessors: the high-end Stratix series, mid-range Arria series, [7] and lower-cost Cyclone series; as well as the MAX series non-volatile FPGAs.

Semiconductor intellectual property cores

Altera and its partners offer an array of semiconductor intellectual property cores that serve as building blocks that design engineers can drop into their system designs to perform specific functions. IP cores eliminate some of the time-consuming tasks of creating every block in a design from scratch. In 2000, Altera acquired Designpro and Northwest Logic, providers of IP cores, in order to expand its design capabilities and move towards delivery of complete system-on-chip solutions. [8] [9]

System on a chip FPGAs

Beginning in December 2012, the company announced the shipment of its first system on a chip FPGA devices using a fully depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI) 28nm chip manufacturing process. These are the Cyclone V SoC devices, which have a dual-core ARM architecture Cortex-A9 processor system with FPGA logic on a single chip. [10] These devices integrated FPGAs with full hard processor systems based around ARM architecture onto a single device. [11] [12] As of 2024, the majority of Altera's FPGA devices are available as an SoC variant with an ARM hard processor system integrated with the FPGA as a single system on a chip.

These SoCs are targeted for use in wireless communications, industrial, video surveillance, automotive and medical equipment markets. With these SoCs devices, users were able to create custom field-programmable SoC variants for power, board space, performance and cost optimization. [13]

Cyclone V SoC, Arria V SoC and Arria 10 SoC product families are system on a chip FPGAs based upon a hard ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core processor system.

Stratix 10 SoC and Agilex 7 SoC product families are system on a chip FPGAs based upon a hard ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor system.

The Agilex 5 SoC product family are system on a chip FPGAs based upon a hard ARM Cortex-A76/A55 quad-core processor system.

Soft Processor cores

Altera offers the Nios V embedded soft processor cores based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture. Previously Altera had offered their own proprietary Nios II embedded soft processor, the Freescale ColdFire v1 core, and the ARM Cortex-M1 processor.

Design software

All of Altera's devices are supported by a common design environment, the Quartus Prime design software, which is a multi-platform development environment that includes various tools needed to design FPGAs, SoC FPGAs, and CPLDs. [14] [15]

In May 2013, Altera made available SDK for OpenCL, enabling software programmers to access the high-performance capabilities of programmable logic devices. [16]

Altera also support high-level synthesis using SYCL extensions to ANSI C/C++.

Intel Partnership, Acquisition and Ownership

In 1984, the company formed a long-running design partnership with Intel. In 1994, Altera acquired the PLD business of Intel for $50 million. [17]

Intel 14-nm technology

In February 2013, Altera announced an agreement to use Intel's foundry services to produce its 14-nm node for the future manufacturing of its FPGAs, based on Intel's 14-nm tri-gate transistor technology, in place of Altera's ongoing agreement with TSMC. [18] The Stratix 10 product family was the first such product line. [19]

Acquisition and Ownership by Intel

In December 2015, Intel acquired Altera for $16.7 billion in cash. [20] [21] Altera became Intel's newly formed business unit called the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). [3]

In October 2023, Intel announced it would be spinning off PSG into a separate company at the start of 2024, while maintaining majority ownership and intending to seek an IPO within three years. [4] [5] In February 2024, Intel announced that the newly independent company would reestablish the Altera name and branding. [6]

Restatement of financial results

On June 21, 2006, after an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company restated its financial results from 1996 to 2005 to correct accounting errors related to options backdating. The chief financial officer of the company resigned. [22] [23] [24] Altera filed a petition to overturn related regulations but was, under Intel, denied in 2020. [25]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Field-programmable gate array</span> Array of logic gates that are reprogrammable

A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be programmed or reprogrammed after manufacturing. FPGAs are part of a broader set of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of an array of programmable logic blocks and interconnects that can be configured to perform various digital functions. FPGAs are commonly used in applications where flexibility, speed, and parallel processing capabilities are required, such as in telecommunications, automotive, aerospace, and industrial sectors.

ARM is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Ltd. develops the ISAs and licenses them to other companies, who build the physical devices that use the instruction set. It also designs and licenses cores that implement these ISAs.

Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with flexible hardware platforms like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to add custom computational blocks using FPGAs. On the other hand, the main difference from custom hardware, i.e. application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is the possibility to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric, thus providing new computational blocks without the need to manufacture and add new chips to the existing system.

JTAG is an industry standard for verifying designs of and testing printed circuit boards after manufacture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xilinx</span> American technology company

Xilinx, Inc. was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company is known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It also created the first fabless manufacturing model.

Nios II is a 32-bit embedded processor architecture designed specifically for the Altera family of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) integrated circuits. Nios II incorporates many enhancements over the original Nios architecture, making it more suitable for a wider range of embedded computing applications, from digital signal processing (DSP) to system-control.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multi-core processor</span> Microprocessor with more than one processing unit

A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions but the single processor can run instructions on separate cores at the same time, increasing overall speed for programs that support multithreading or other parallel computing techniques. Manufacturers typically integrate the cores onto a single integrated circuit die or onto multiple dies in a single chip package. The microprocessors currently used in almost all personal computers are multi-core.

Nallatech is a computer hardware and software firm based in Camarillo, California, United States. The company specializes in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) integrated circuit technology applied in computing. As of 2007 the company's primary markets include defense and high-performance computing. Nallatech was acquired by Interconnect Systems, Inc. in 2008, which in turn was bought by Molex in 2016.

Intel Quartus Prime is programmable logic device design software produced by Intel; prior to Intel's acquisition of Altera the tool was called Altera Quartus Prime, earlier Altera Quartus II. Quartus Prime enables analysis and synthesis of HDL designs, which enables the developer to compile their designs, perform timing analysis, examine RTL diagrams, simulate a design's reaction to different stimuli, and configure the target device with the programmer. Quartus Prime includes an implementation of VHDL and Verilog for hardware description, visual editing of logic circuits, and vector waveform simulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARM Cortex-A9</span> 32-bit multicore processor developed by SR1

The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arm Holdings</span> British multinational semiconductor and software design company

Arm Holdings plc is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England, whose primary business is the design of central processing unit (CPU) cores that implement the ARM architecture family of instruction sets. It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, and provides systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies. Since 2016, it has been majority owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group.

Rockchip is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. Rockchip has been providing SoC products for tablets & PCs, streaming media TV boxes, AI audio & vision, IoT hardware since founded in 2001. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products, using the ARM architecture licensed from ARM Holdings for the majority of its projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARM Cortex-M</span> Group of 32-bit RISC processor cores

The ARM Cortex-M is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Limited. These cores are optimized for low-cost and energy-efficient integrated circuits, which have been embedded in tens of billions of consumer devices. Though they are most often the main component of microcontroller chips, sometimes they are embedded inside other types of chips too. The Cortex-M family consists of Cortex-M0, Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M1, Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4, Cortex-M7, Cortex-M23, Cortex-M33, Cortex-M35P, Cortex-M52, Cortex-M55, Cortex-M85. A floating-point unit (FPU) option is available for Cortex-M4 / M7 / M33 / M35P / M52 / M55 / M85 cores, and when included in the silicon these cores are sometimes known as "Cortex-MxF", where 'x' is the core variant.

Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. designs, manufactures, develops, and sells fabless semiconductors for communications applications in wireless and wired networks.

Virtex is the flagship family of FPGA products currently developed by AMD, originally Xilinx before being acquired by the former. Other current product lines include Kintex (mid-range) and Artix (low-cost), each including configurations and models optimized for different applications. In addition, AMD offers the Spartan low-cost series, which continues to be updated and is nearing production utilizing the same underlying architecture and process node as the larger 7-series devices.

Heterogeneous computing refers to systems that use more than one kind of processor or core. These systems gain performance or energy efficiency not just by adding the same type of processors, but by adding dissimilar coprocessors, usually incorporating specialized processing capabilities to handle particular tasks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stratix</span>

Stratix is a brand of FPGA products developed by Intel, Programmable Solutions Group. Other current FPGA product lines include e.g. Agilex, Arria and Cyclone families.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vivado</span> Software suite developed by AMD

Vivado Design Suite is a software suite for synthesis and analysis of hardware description language (HDL) designs, superseding Xilinx ISE with additional features for system on a chip development and high-level synthesis. Vivado represents a ground-up rewrite and re-thinking of the entire design flow.

The ARM Cortex-A55 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8.2-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Cambridge design centre. The Cortex-A55 is a 2-wide decode in-order superscalar pipeline.

Agilex is a brand covering several families of FPGA products developed by Intel Programmable Solutions Group, and are the FPGA products developed by Intel after the acquisition of Altera. The initial family of Agilex FPGAs began shipping in 2019 and are built using Intel 10nm silicon process. Agilex FPGAs are typically programmed in hardware description languages such as VHDL or Verilog, using the Intel Quartus Prime computer software. Higher level design languages, such as SYCL, are supported as well.

References

  1. ↑ "Altera Corporation 2014 Form 10-K Annual Report". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
  2. ↑ "The Road to Innovation Drive" (PDF). Altera News & Views. 2003 (Q2): 5–10. June 2003.
  3. 1 2 Darrow, Barb (December 28, 2015). "Altera Gives Intel a Hot Hand in Programmable Chips". Fortune . Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  4. 1 2 King, Ian (October 3, 2023). "Intel to Make Former Altera Into Standalone Business, Seek IPO". Bloomberg News.
  5. 1 2 Leswing, Kif (October 3, 2023). "Intel plans to IPO programmable chip unit within three years; stock rises after hours". CNBC.
  6. 1 2 "Intel Launches Altera, Its New Standalone FPGA Company". Intel. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  7. ↑ "Arria 10 Device Overview" (PDF). Intel. September 4, 2013.
  8. ↑ "Altera Buys System Design Firm". EE Times . September 12, 2000.
  9. ↑ "Altera Acquires Designpro". EE Times . May 2, 2000.
  10. ↑ McConnel, Toni (December 12, 2012). "Altera ships its first Cyclone V SoC devices". Embedded.
  11. ↑ Maxfield, Clive (December 12, 2012). "Altera's shipping its first SoC FPGAs". EE Times .
  12. ↑ Clarke, Peter (December 15, 2012). "Altera eyes FDSOI process for FPGAs". EE Times .
  13. ↑ "Altera and ARM Announce Industry's First FPGA-Adaptive Embedded Software Toolkit" (Press release). Arm Holdings. December 12, 2012.
  14. ↑ Maxfield, Clive (May 9, 2011). "Altera's Quartus Prime design software features Qsys System Integration Tool". EETimes .
  15. ↑ Maxfield, Clive (November 7, 2011). "Latest and greatest Quartus II design software from Altera". EETimes .
  16. ↑ Maxfield, Clive (May 6, 2013). "Altera opens the FPGA world to software programmers". EE Times .
  17. ↑ "MERCHANT IC VENDORS" (PDF). Smithsonian Institution.
  18. ↑ "Altera to Build Next-Generation, High-Performance FPGAs on Intel's 14 nm Tri-Gate Technology" (Press release). Intel. February 25, 2013.
  19. ↑ Hruska, Joel (October 10, 2016). "Intel launches Stratix 10: Altera FPGA combined with ARM CPU, 14nm manufacturing". ExtremeTech.
  20. ↑ Clark, Don (December 28, 2015). "Intel Completes Acquisition of Altera" . The Wall Street Journal .
  21. ↑ Burt, Jeffrey (December 28, 2015). "Intel Completes $16.7 Billion Altera Deal". eWeek .
  22. ↑ "Altera Announces Expected Restatement Related to Stock-Based Compensation" (Press release). Business Wire. June 21, 2006.
  23. ↑ McGrath, Dylan (June 21, 2006). "Altera to restate 10 years of earnings". EE Times .
  24. ↑ Taub, Stephen (June 22, 2006). "Altera to Restate 10 Years of Financials". CFO .
  25. ↑ "US Supreme Court declines to hear Altera case". Ernst & Young . June 22, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.