Altera
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| Altera | |
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: ALTR) |
| Founded | 1983, public since 1989 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, CA |
| Key people | John P. Daane, CEO |
| Industry | Integrated Circuits |
| Products | FPGAs, CPLDs, Embedded Processors, Structured ASICs |
| Revenue | $1.26 billion/year (2007) |
| Employees | 2,651 (Dec. 2007) |
| Website | www.altera.com |
Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) is a leading manufacturer of programmable logic devices. It is a member of the NASDAQ-100 group of technology stocks and the S&P 500.
Altera is one of the pioneers of Programmable Logic, following notable early leaders Signetics and MMI in introducing PLDs. Altera develops many features that are geared towards system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) capability. Some of the more recent examples include embedded memory, embedded processors, embedded DSP blocks, and high-speed transceivers. The success in 130nm and 90nm product launches are good case studies. Altera's Nios II and Nios soft core processors and HardCopy II & HardCopy devices are extending Altera's reach in addressable markets, and put Altera in the world of embedded processors and structured ASICs respectively. Among its chief competitors are Xilinx, Lattice Semiconductor, Actel and QuickLogic.
Altera also offers the software suite Quartus II, aimed at the design and simulation of logic circuits. Although their software suite extensively supports VHDL and Verilog as primary languages, Altera is the developer of the Hardware Description Language known as AHDL. Although the company is based in San Jose, CA, approximately 78% of its 2007 revenue was generated from sales to customers outside of North America. Its largest international markets are Japan (20%), Europe (24%) and Asia Pacific (34%). [1]
Contents |
[edit] Current Device Family Lines
[edit] CPLDs
- MAX 3000A: EPM3032A,EPM3064A,EPM3128A,EPM3256A,EPM3512A
- MAX 7000: EPM7032B,EPM7064B,EPM7128B,EPM7256B,EPM7512B
- MAX II: EPM240,EPM570,EPM1270,EPM2210
- MAX IIZ: EPM240Z,EPM570Z
[edit] High-Performance, Fully Featured FPGAs
- Stratix: announced February 11, 2002
- Stratix GX: announced November 4, 2002
- Stratix II: announced February 2, 2004
- Stratix II GX: announced October 24, 2005
- Stratix III (L & E): announced November 8, 2006
- Stratix IV (E & GX): announced May 19, 2008
[edit] Low-Cost FPGAs
- Cyclone: announced September 23, 2002
- Cyclone II: announced June 28, 2004
- Cyclone III: announced March 19, 2007
- Arria GX: announced May 8, 2007
[edit] Structured ASICs
- HardCopy Stratix: announced February 4, 2002
- HardCopy II: announced January 24, 2005
- HardCopy IV (E & GX): announced May 19, 2008
[edit] IP and Cores
[edit] Royalty-Free
- Nios II software embedded processor core.
[edit] Design Software Products
[edit] Competition
- Altera's major competitors are Xilinx and Lattice Semiconductor.
- Other notable competitors in the field of FPGAs are Actel and QuickLogic.
While CPLDs and classic FPGAs were historically pure logic devices, the more recent generations have embedded specialized functionality in order to lower power and utilization while increasing speed and/or throughput. This is especially evident with the inclusion of Digital signal processing blocks within FPGA devices, meaning that companies like Texas Instruments or Analog Devices are now competitors in some market spaces.
[edit] External links
- Altera official website
- Cornell ECE576 uses Altera FPGAs
- Nios processor community
- Altera Support
- Altera Profile at Wikinvest
