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iniewski
that is very true @reneCardenas...which is probably why we have Xilinx-Altera ...
ReneCardenas
But doesn't the sheer size and time required to establish a good tool ecosystem ...
Silicon Valley Nation: Xilinx, Altera all grow'd up?
Brian Fuller
10/2/2012 2:55 PM EDT
CAMPBELL, Calif.--In earlier days, Altera and Xilinx always evoked
an Ali-Frazier weigh-in, or something out of the Cold War. Sure,
there were other vendors in programmable logic, each gnawing on the
next guy's ankle, but Altera and Xilinx made a blood sport out of
it.
Altera would make an announcement, and Xilinx would host a press conference a day or two later to blast holes in it; Xilinx would announce something and Altera would lob over mortar rounds. (The CEO of one of them once called me to question the sanity of covering the other company's announcement...the CEO!) We in the middle of it, whether in publishing or market research, loved it because it made for great copy.
Those were the days... fading fast into the mists.
[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
Last month, Altera gave a peek inside the kimono to its 20-nm node, where the company will offer 40-Gbps chip-to-chip and 28-Gbps backplane transceivers, heterogeneous 3-D ICs featuring a high-speed chip-to-chip interface, and next-generation DSP performance with the highest TFLOPs/watt. Altera CTO Misha Burich offered the occasional tech comparison to Xilinx, but tipped his cap in his competitor's direction when he mentioned hybrid memory cube technology.
"You'll see both companies doing it and that's good for the whole industry," Burich said in an interview. "We want the supply chain to do as much as possible because that drives costs down."
Detente indeed.
Next: X factor
Altera would make an announcement, and Xilinx would host a press conference a day or two later to blast holes in it; Xilinx would announce something and Altera would lob over mortar rounds. (The CEO of one of them once called me to question the sanity of covering the other company's announcement...the CEO!) We in the middle of it, whether in publishing or market research, loved it because it made for great copy.
Those were the days... fading fast into the mists.
[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
Last month, Altera gave a peek inside the kimono to its 20-nm node, where the company will offer 40-Gbps chip-to-chip and 28-Gbps backplane transceivers, heterogeneous 3-D ICs featuring a high-speed chip-to-chip interface, and next-generation DSP performance with the highest TFLOPs/watt. Altera CTO Misha Burich offered the occasional tech comparison to Xilinx, but tipped his cap in his competitor's direction when he mentioned hybrid memory cube technology.
"You'll see both companies doing it and that's good for the whole industry," Burich said in an interview. "We want the supply chain to do as much as possible because that drives costs down."
Detente indeed.
Next: X factor
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iniewski
10/3/2012 10:35 AM EDT
Interesting take Brian...perhaps FPGA industry is getting mature...unless Tabula can make inroads against the established positions of Xilinx and ALtera...Kris
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ReneCardenas
10/5/2012 11:04 AM EDT
But doesn't the sheer size and time required to establish a good tool ecosystem prevent others to join in the viable system solutions.
I wish other well, but see their chances very grim to raise to the level require to present any challenge.
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iniewski
10/5/2012 11:14 AM EDT
that is very true @reneCardenas...which is probably why we have Xilinx-Altera duo-poly...Atmel has a small niche and others like Tabula are trying but chances are small that they will join the big 2 because of teh sheer size of the investment required
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