Intel launches standalone FPGA company Altera

Started in 1983 by four veterans of the semiconductor industry with $500,000 in seed money, Altera entered a long-term partnership with Intel the following year. One decade later, it acquired Inte's PLD business for $50 million. In September 2000, Altera also acquired Northwest Logic in an attempt to expand its ability to deliver complete SoC designs. However, Intel acquired Altera at the end of 2015.

After becoming a part of Intel, Altera became a new business unit under the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) name. However, Intel announced its intention to turn PSG into a separate company in early 2024. Last month, the chip maker announced the return of Altera. This week, Altera finally returns as a standalone FPGA company.

According to Intel, "Altera's solutions are optimized to target a broad range of markets and use cases, ranging from networking and communications infrastructure to low-power embedded applications." The list of new products announced includes the following:

• Agilex 9, aimed at radar and military-aerospace applications;
• Agilex 7 F-series and I-series (data center, networking, and defense);
• Agilex 5 (AI-enabled FPGA fabric targeting embedded and edge applications); 
• Agilex 3, an upcoming low-power line of FPGAs for cloud, communications, and intelligent edge applications.

In addition to delivering next-gen solutions that would fully exploit the power of AI, Altera also aims to further refine evolving standards such as PCI Express, CXL, Ethernet, and 6G wireless.

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