Has the semiconductor world gone acquisition crazy? It certainly seems that way with the more than $60B in M&A activity which may now include Altera. We are probably getting close to the 80/20 rule where 80% of the semiconductor revenue is being generated by 20% of the companies. Not far off from where we were at 25 years ago when… Read More
Tag: altera
Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?
Does the evil sounding phenomenon known as Dark Silicon create a big opportunity for FPGA vendors as was predicted recently by Pacific Crest Securities? John Vinh posits that using multiple cores as a method of scaling throughput is flattening out, and the use of FPGA’s to perform computation can help off-load and thus overcome… Read More
Intel Goes After Broadcom
Intel continues shopping spree with Broadcom
AMAT drops TEL merger due to high remedy cost
Global Foundries wins Apple A9 business at 20nm for 6S & “6C”
Intel follows Altera with Broadcom chaser…..
Sources in the industry have confirmed that Intel is advanced discussions to acquire Broadcom, following… Read More
Intel to Buy Altera?
You may already have heard today’s big news in the semiconductor fabless ecosystem that Intel is apparently in talks to buy Altera. I embarrassed myself predicting that Samsung were in talks to buy Freescale (which, of course, they might have been but NXP won that particular race). But this time it is definite enough that … Read More
Xilinx’s 16nm UltraScale+ FPGA is Revolutionary
Well a very belated Happy New Year dear reader. I must admit, it has been a very long winter and it has caused the Miller’s to rethink this vital question. “What in the world are we doing living in NY”. So we are moving, and hopefully this is my last ‘real’ winter as we headed down south. To perhaps alleviate some of the winter blues from … Read More
Altera Back to TSMC at 10nm? Xilinx Staying There
Xilinx announced their quarterly results last week. They slightly missed their number due mainly to a decline in wireless sales. Of course Xilinx parts don’t go in the smartphones since the cost and power are too high, but they are very heavily used in basestation, backhaul etc especially in China. Xilinx’s business… Read More
Silicon Does NOT Lie!
In the 30+ years that I have worked in Silicon Valley I have seen many great products fail and even more mediocre products succeed, the difference being how the companies communicate to the outside world. In the semiconductor industry, presenting the value proposition of your company or product is under even more scrutiny now that… Read More
ARM ♥ Xilinx!
The good news is that as a part of SemiWiki we get free media passes to all of the cool conferences. The bad news is that our inboxes get flooded with announcements. ARM TechCon is next week and my delete button is on overtime but it is interesting to see who is active in conferences and who is not. In this case Xilinx is very active and Altera… Read More
The Must Read FPGA Book – Secrets Inside
Crockett, Elliot, Enderwitz & Stewart is not a law firm, thank goodness… what you’ll find is that these folks are the authors of the world famous book entitled, now hold on here for a title, this is a creative one “The Zynq Book”, It is free, get your download here. Every designer should have this book no matter what FPGA parts they… Read More
Xilinx UltraScale leads the way on connectivity
Even though Xilinx FPGAs seem to keep growing in densities and gobbling up boards into a single part, there is still the need for chip to chip connectivity and of course backplane connectivity. Xilinx 20nm UltraScale, TODAY, can really move 28 gb/s over the back plane. This is something that you cannot do with Altera 20nm, they are… Read More