Why doesn't altera build a mcu/fpga combo chip ?

[ippisl]

in the last year or two , altera released an fpga based on 55nm flash process(max 10). This enables you to use a soft micro-controller. They've also added adc's . This gives you a nice and versatile package that fits embedded projects. And of course they tell you about it in their marketing materials.

Buy why haven't they gone all the way - added an hard core cortex-m4 mcu , some hardcore peripherals , etc? could have been a killer chip for industrial projects.

Is there something to do with ARM's licensing that limits them ? maybe ARM limits the use of accelerators unless you pay a lot?

 

[yanfeng]

Do you mean something like Cypress's Psoc?
yanfeng

 

[ippisl]

Yes, but cypress psoc also has programmable analog which leads to many bad tradeofs , including using very old process , very little fpga cells and low ram/cpu/flash etc, high power(analog and digital) , expensive , and even with all those trade-offs it was pretty successful for cypress.

 

[Bernard Murphy]

Any update on where Altera stands wrt ARM versus Intel cores? I saw some comments saying no change, then (I think - maybe I remember this through an excess of holiday alcohol) some saying they were switching to Intel, then ...?

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Is there something to do with ARM's licensing that limits them ? maybe ARM limits the use of accelerators unless you pay a lot?

This was discussed at ARM TechCon 2015. Intel has had many ARM licenses due to acquisitions but the relationship was strained when Intel started attacking ARM in mobile and ARM struck back at servers, neither which were successful.

ARM partnered with both Xilinx and Altera and treated them as equals. That started to change (in my opinion) when Altera switched fabs from TSMC to Intel Custom Foundry and started a brutal PR attack on Xilinx. Now that Intel officially owns Altera, I would expect a big change in relationships with ARM going deeper with Xilinx in the server market and moving away from INTERA...

Sound reasonable?

 

[Staf_Verhaegen]

in the last year or two , altera released an fpga based on 55nm flash process(max 10). This enables you to use a soft micro-controller. They've also added adc's . This gives you a nice and versatile package that fits embedded projects. And of course they tell you about it in their marketing materials.

Although they don't have Flash based FPGA with hard cored they do have SRAM based ones with what they call hard processor system. So I don't think licensing is holding them back.

 

[ippisl]

Staf, it could be that ARM has different licensing schemes in the mcu market ,because most of the differentiation mcu makers have is via peripherials , and on the other hand , for a lot of their volume, if they choose a different mcu core , i think users will adapt.