Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
by mastax on Sunday September 25, 2016 @10:02PM
(#12578731)
>Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead.
Intel had been fabbing (some of?) Altera's chips for a few years before the acquisition, so from this angle it makes more sense than Xilinx. As to why Altera had this partnership and not Xilinx, who knows. Perhaps being in second place motivates you to shake things up.
Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
by totalZero on Monday September 26, 2016 @05:05AM
(#12580338)
My understanding is that Intel has a service called Intel Custom Foundry that gives smaller partner companies access to Intel's fabrication pipeline. Altera was a client of Intel Custom Foundry, and the two companies started to build some FPGA-accelerated x86 products together, so it was a pretty natural acquisition versus a potential Xilinx deal.
Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
by friendzis on Monday September 26, 2016 @06:40AM
(#12580709)
From my own experience Altera floods education/research facilities with free-or-cheap developement boards and tools compared to Xilinx. Much like Atmel or Microsoft itself. Microsoft already has large programs to grow users for their software and Altera is more suitable in this regard.
Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
by nickpsecurity on Sunday September 25, 2016 @09:44PM
(#12578652)
They're similar in capabilities, Altera's tooling is easier-to-use per comments I see, and it's much cheaper buy. Funny thing was that, when Intel was buying Altera, people were suggesting Xilinx should buy AMD. That's how funny the financial situation is between top CPU and FPGA vendors. Haha.
Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
by qq66 on Monday September 26, 2016 @12:43AM
(#12579287)
In heavily scale-dependent industries there's often an enormous financial gap between #1 and #2. Compare Intel's CPU profits to AMD's, Nvidia's to formerly ATI, Xilinx to Altera, Apple to Samsung, etc.
Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip
by nickpsecurity on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:28AM
(#12579435)
It's true. Comes from First Mover Advantage that I'm aware of. I used to say go for quality first but these days I'm likely to tell people to be first to ship with extra care on upgradeable interfaces. Then you get First Mover Advantage plus ability to fix the BS it causes.
Intel openly acknowledges it. From the article:
"Microsoft’s services are so large, and they use so many FPGAs, that they’re shifting the worldwide chip market. The FPGAs come from a company called Altera, and Intel vice president Diane Bryant tells me that Microsoft is why Intel acquired Altera last summer—a deal worth $16.7 billion, the largest acquisition in the history of the largest chipmaker on Earth. By 2020, she says, a third of all servers inside all the major cloud computing companies will include FPGAs."
Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead.