Dr Ian Cutress:
Whenever I talk about the land of compute, we imagine it as a line going from CPU to GPU, to FPGA then ASIC. If you want to talk about AI, it gets muddy somewhere in the middle! But one of the key things that I think people forget is that FPGAs exist.
FPGAs have been the lifeblood of this industry for decades. They are the reconfigurable compute that makes it so other chips can be designed and can be built. They’re also used a lot in systems where that reconfigurability enables new security to be added, or new features to be added in the life cycle. These parts typically exist in the environment for 10 to 15 years or more, allowing that consistent upgrade cycle in the reconfigurable hardware to happen.
Now, one of the biggest players in FPGAs since I’ve been covering this industry has been Altera. I covered Altera when it was acquired back in 2015/2016 by Intel for around $15 billion. We are now 10 years later, and Intel is divesting its ownership of Altera. An investment fund called Silver Lake is buying 51% of the company, and Intel will retain 49%. It’s a position that allows Altera to be flexible, which is the interesting way of putting it. It means that they control their own destiny. It means they can decide what markets to go after, and we can get a true refresh and invigoration of the product stack, of the customer stack, and what lies in store for the world of FPGAs.
Whenever I talk about the land of compute, we imagine it as a line going from CPU to GPU, to FPGA then ASIC. If you want to talk about AI, it gets muddy somewhere in the middle! But one of the key things that I think people forget is that FPGAs exist.
FPGAs have been the lifeblood of this industry for decades. They are the reconfigurable compute that makes it so other chips can be designed and can be built. They’re also used a lot in systems where that reconfigurability enables new security to be added, or new features to be added in the life cycle. These parts typically exist in the environment for 10 to 15 years or more, allowing that consistent upgrade cycle in the reconfigurable hardware to happen.
Now, one of the biggest players in FPGAs since I’ve been covering this industry has been Altera. I covered Altera when it was acquired back in 2015/2016 by Intel for around $15 billion. We are now 10 years later, and Intel is divesting its ownership of Altera. An investment fund called Silver Lake is buying 51% of the company, and Intel will retain 49%. It’s a position that allows Altera to be flexible, which is the interesting way of putting it. It means that they control their own destiny. It means they can decide what markets to go after, and we can get a true refresh and invigoration of the product stack, of the customer stack, and what lies in store for the world of FPGAs.
