Are TSMC and Intel locking horns over Altera?
Altera is far from putting all its eggs in one basket.
The firm is working with foundries Intel and TSMC and research institute Imec to develop its FPGA manufacturing technologies.
The most recent collaboration is between Altera and Intel. The two firms have signed an agreement for the future manufacture of Altera FPGAs on Intel's 14nm tri-gate transistor technology.
Since the announcement by Altera regarding its partnership with Intel, TSMC has reaffirmed its commitment to a long-term partnership with Altera to set new milestones in FPGA innovation.
Next-generation FPGAs target ultra high-performance systems for military, wireline communications, cloud networking, and compute and storage applications. They will enable breakthrough levels of performance and power efficiencies not otherwise possible.
A Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing - hence "field-programmable". The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
Contemporary FPGAs have large resources of logic gates and RAM blocks to implement complex digital computations. FPGAs can be used to implement any logical function that an ASIC could perform. The ability to update the functionality after shipping, partial re-configuration of a portion of the design and the low non-recurring engineering costs relative to an ASIC design (notwithstanding the generally higher unit cost), offer advantages for many applications.
"Altera's FPGAs using Intel 14nm technology will enable customers to design with the most advanced, highest-performing FPGAs in the industry," says John Daane, president, CEO and chairman of Altera. "In addition, Altera gains a tremendous competitive advantage at the high end in that we are the only major FPGA company with access to this technology."
Altera's next-generation products will now include 14nm, in addition to previously announced (TSMC) 20nm technologies, extending the company's tailored product portfolio that meets myriad customer needs for performance, bandwidth and power efficiency across diverse end applications.
"We look forward to collaborating with Altera on manufacturing leading-edge FPGAs, leveraging Intel's leadership in process technology," continues Brian Krzanich, chief operating officer, Intel. "Next-generation products from Altera require the highest performance and most power-efficient technology available, and Intel is well positioned to provide the most advanced offerings."
Not to be left out, TSMC says it is Altera's primary foundry, supplying a wide array of processes to fulfil Altera's product portfolio, including soon-to-be-released 20nm products, existing mainstream products, and long-lived legacy components.
The Taiwanese giant says Altera is fully engaged with TSMC on developing products based on next-generation process technologies. Altera's next major product family leverages TSMC's cost-effective 20SoC process for optimal power and performance and will include several significant product and technology innovations for both companies. Altera will continue to leverage future TSMC process technologies in its tailored product portfolio for performance, bandwidth, and power efficiency needs across diverse end applications.
"Over the course of our 20-year collaboration, Altera and TSMC have achieved many industry milestones that have greatly benefitted both companies," notes John Daane, president, CEO and chairman of Altera. "TSMC remains an important part of our future product development. We look forward to continuing our close partnership to jointly develop technologies for next-generation products."
Morris Chang, TSMC's chairman and CEO adds, "The history of collaboration between Altera and TSMC has exemplified the way fabless and foundry have nurtured each other to become a powerful force in the semiconductor industry. TSMC would not be where it is today without customers like Altera, and I firmly believe this partnership will continue to flourish."
Adding Intel to Altera's strong foundation of leading-edge suppliers and partners furthers the company's ability to deliver on the promise of silicon convergence; to integrate hardware and software programmability, microprocessors, digital signal processing, and ASIC capability into a single device; and deliver a more flexible and economical alternative to traditional ASICs and ASSPs.
