Intel is transforming its FPGA division into an independent company under the well-known brand name Altera.

Intel (relaunches) Altera as an independent company. The chip specialist had already announced this previously Programmable Chip Solutions Group would split off. Altera was founded in 1983 and was swallowed up by Intel in 2015, which is now looking for more distance again.

During the FPGA Vision Webcast, CEO Sandra Rivera and COO Shannon Poulin presented their strategy to take leadership in a market worth more than $55 billion. Your goal is to expand the product portfolio of the brand new company. Intel and Altera have to compete against AMD’s FPGAs, which have now fully integrated Xilinx.

AI

Altera’s portfolio and roadmap address the growing FPGA markets in the cloud, network and edge. The focus includes, among other things, improving Quartus Prime software and easier integration of AI capabilities to respond to these rapidly growing application segments.

The rise of AI is creating new complexities and opportunities across industries, notes Aletra, who adheres to the new unwritten rule that says you can’t announce technology without shouting AI. Altera responds to the hype with the FPGA AI Suite and OpenVINO.

New products and services

The start of the new company brings with it some new solutions. Altera announces the following new products and services:

• Agilex 9, now in mass production, provides the ideal data converter for radar and military aviation applications requiring high-bandwidth mixed-signal FPGAs.
• The Agilex 7 F-Series and I-Series devices are now in production. With twice the performance per watt compared to competing FPGAs, Aletra says they are themselves aimed at computing applications such as data centers, networking and defense.
• Agilex 5 is now widely available and is an FPGA with built-in AI hype. According to Aletra, the performance is best in class and the chip offers 1.6 times better performance per watt compared to competing products. The FPGA is aimed at embedded and edge applications.
• Coming soon is Agilex 3, which will introduce an industry-leading low-cost, low-power line of FPGAs for simple functions in cloud, communications and intelligent edge applications.