Nine months prior, Intel transformed its programmable chip manufacturing subsidiary, Altera, into an independent entity, with the aim of taking it public by 2026.
On Monday, Altera’s executives made a compelling case for why they expect their company to continue dominating the market for programmable chips in the years to come.
Altera’s CEO Sandra Rivera stated during a press conference that the company’s goal is to become the top provider of FPGA solutions globally.
Although it may seem a monumental challenge, this ambitious objective aligns perfectly with our company’s strengths, given that we are the sole firm capable of supporting every aspect, from bottom to top and edge to cloud, leveraging our expertise in field-programmable gate arrays – an essential component found in nearly all products relying on microchips.
In 2015, Intel acquired Altera for $15 billion, one of a trio of programmable chip manufacturers that emerged in the 1980s, alongside Xilinx, which was recently acquired by AMD, and Lattice Semiconductor, remaining independent.
Altera aims to go public by 2026, according to Rivera, who described this step as “a really enjoyable and essential milestone” in their journey to become the industry leader. However, she emphasized that the company’s true focus lies in the years following its initial public offering, when it will continue working towards its number one status.
Underneath Intel’s ownership, Altera’s performance was marked by a notable profitability in cloud computing applications, exceeding initial expectations. The emergence of an infrastructure processing unit (IPU), capable of offloading tasks akin to storage management from a server’s primary CPU, was a welcome surprise.
“That was a play that wouldn’t have been seen in 2015,” said Rivera. “And every single socket available for FPGAs was ours,” she said, referring to the company’s IPUs.
On the flip side, however, we fell short in considering that we could have done more co-packaging of the FPGA with the CPU, as we didn’t fully grasp at that time how much we’d be constraining one device or the other, potentially limiting customers’ ability to utilize both units at their full potential. The proposed strategy failed to materialize, and we abandoned it within the initial two-year period.
At the developer convention on Monday, Rivera’s team delivered compelling product updates that solidified their market dominance over both Xilinx and Lattice. The corporation unveiled its latest family of programmable chips, the Agilex 3 series of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).
Here’s a revised version:
The chip household is engineered to thrive in resource-limited environments, specifically tailored for cost-conscious and space-restricted applications in emerging markets such as edge computing and robotics, where scalability and efficiency are paramount.
According to Intel’s press release, “The Agilex 3 FPGAs boast significantly higher levels of integration, bolstered security features, and improved power efficiency within a compact form factor, with density options spanning 25K-135K logic gates.”
With significantly enhanced element integration, the chips boast a unique feature set, as described by Rivera, featuring dual onboard ARM “Cortex-A55” CPUs. The Agilex 3 enables the shipping of advanced features for autonomous vehicles and industrial IoT applications, according to her definition, within a compact and highly efficient device.
Chips now boast heightened focus on the internal ‘connective tissue’ to efficiently handle real-time computational demands. For time-sensitive networks, as emphasized by Rivera, “latency is unacceptable, making it crucial to process information locally and instantly.”
The latest Agilex 5 from Intel boasts a significant increase in efficiency, further enhanced by the introduction of its novel “D sequence” at the recent convention. According to Rivera, the D sequence provides additional capabilities for managing expanded product portfolios within the programmable-chip industry.
Altura has significantly expanded its offerings to developers and partners, tripling the number of system boards and reference kits available for use with their popular Agilex chips, led by Rivera. “We’re thrilled to witness our ecosystem flourishing, as investors partner with us and propel the availability of Agilex 5-based design kits across a wide range of applications.”
Altera has updated its Quartus Prime Professional software, a premier development tool for builders. The numerous upgrades include significant accelerations in compilation time, as a programmer’s customised circuit blueprint is seamlessly transferred onto the reconfigurable microprocessor.
“Famous baseball manager Joe Rivera proudly announces, ‘We’ve compiled our game plan.'” “Since introducing our merchandise on the Agilex platform over the past few years, we’ve seen a remarkable 30% reduction in compile times,” she explained, “allowing developers potentially one extra iteration of their algorithm to test and refine.” By simplifying the development process, they accelerate their growth, shaving off a crucial hour in the compile time – from three hours to a mere two.
The Quartex software programme also enables designers to integrate Altera’s Nios V soft-core processor, a programmable alternative to traditional CPU cores like ARM. Unlike hardwired ARM CPUs, this soft-core processor can be instantiated directly within the FPGA fabric.
With its enhanced impartiality, Rivera anticipates that the revamped Altera will showcase an expansive range of capabilities. With Intel as the primary target market, the company’s primary focus was concentrated on a specific subset of customers that failed to unlock the full capabilities of the FPGAs.
“We underestimated the importance of building a strong distribution network and leveraging our partners’ capabilities to drive growth and scalability across our portfolio.” From an Intel technique perspective, this low-priority project’s impact pales in comparison to the top 25 revenue-generating initiatives that drive the majority of the company’s income.
“One of our key benefits is the ability to adapt to diverse scenarios, customer needs, and technological capabilities across our entire product range, allowing us to cater to various market segments and purposes.”