Altera Corporation is a Silicon Valley manufacturer of PLDs (programmable logic device

Programmable logic device

A programmable logic device or PLD is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike a logic gate, which has a fixed function, a PLD has an undefined function at the time of manufacture...

s). The company offered its first programmable logic device in 1984. PLDs can be reprogrammed during the design cycle as well as in the field to perform multiple functions, and they support a fairly fast design process. Altera's main products are the Cyclone, Arria GX and Stratix series of FPGAs (field-programmable gate array

Field-programmable gate array

A field-programmable gate array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by the customer or designer after manufacturing—hence "field-programmable"...

s), the MAX series of CPLDs (complex programmable logic devices), the HardCopy series of ASICs (ASIC

ASIC

ASIC may refer to:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a customised general-purpose device.* ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC...

) and Quartus II design software.

FPGAs

The Stratix series FPGAs are the company's largest, highest bandwidth devices, with up to 1.1 million logic elements, integrated transceivers at up to 28 Gbit/s, up to 1.6 Tbit/s of serial switching capability, up to 1,840 GMACs of signal-processing performance, and up to 7 x72 DDR3 memory interfaces at 800 MHz. Cyclone series FPGAs are the company's lowest cost, lowest power FPGAs, with variants offering integrated transceivers up to 3.125 Gbit/s. In between these two device families are Arria series FPGAs, which provide a balance of performance, power, and cost for mid-range applications such as remote radio heads, video conferencing equipment, and wireline access equipment. Arria FPGAs have integrated transceivers up to 6.375 Gbit/s.

ASICs

Altera offers a design flow based on HardCopy ASICs, which transitions the FPGA design, once finalized, to a form which is not alterable. This design flow reduces design security risks as well as costs for higher volume production. Design engineers can prototype their designs in Stratix series FPGAs, and then migrate these designs to HardCopy ASICs when they're ready for volume production.

The unique design flow makes hardware/software co-design and co-verification possible. The flow has been benchmarked to deliver systems to market 9 to 12 months faster, on average, than with standard-cell solutions. Design engineers can employ a single RTL, set of intellectual property (IP) cores, and Quartus II design software for both FPGA and ASIC implementations. Altera's HardCopy Design Center manages test insertion.

28-nm Technology

In April 2010, Altera introduced the FPGA industry's first 28-nm device, the Stratix V FPGA, available with transceivers at speeds up to 28 Gbit/s. This device family has more than 1 million logic elements, up to 53 Mb of embedded memory, up to 7 x72 DDR3 DIMMs at 800 MHz, 1.6-Gbit/s LVDS performance, and up to 3,680 variable-precision DSP blocks. In August 2011, Altera began shipping 28-nm Stratix V GT devices featuring 28-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) transceivers.

The devices also feature some unique features. Embedded HardCopy Blocks harden standard or logic-intensive applications, increasing integration and delivering twice the density without a cost or power penalty. Altera has developed a user friendly method for partial reconfiguration, so core functionality can be changed easily and on the fly. And there is a path to HardCopy V ASICs, when designs are ready for volume production. Also, Altera’s 28nm FPGAs aim to reduce power requirements to 200 mW per channel.

40-nm Technology

In May 2008, Altera introduced the industry's first 40-nm programmable logic devices: the Stratix IV FPGAs and HardCopy IV ASICs. Both devices are available with integrated transceiver options. Since then, the company has also introduced Stratix IV GT FPGAs, which have 11.3-Gbit/s transceivers for 40G/100G applications, and Arria II GX FPGAs, which have 3.75-Gbit/s transceivers for power- and cost-sensitive applications.

Semiconductors manufactured on a 40-nm process node address many of the industry's key challenges, including power consumption, device performance, and cost. Altera's devices are manufactured using techniques such as 193-nm immersion lithography

Immersion lithography

Immersion lithography is a photolithography resolution enhancement technique for manufacturing integrated circuits that replaces the usual air gap between the final lens and the wafer surface with a liquid medium that has a refractive index greater than one. The resolution is increased by a factor...

 and technologies such as extreme low-k dielectrics and strained silicon

Strained silicon

Strained silicon is a layer of silicon in which the silicon atoms are stretched beyond their normal interatomic distance. This can be accomplished by putting the layer of silicon over a substrate of silicon germanium...

. These techniques and technologies bring enhancements to device performance and power efficiency.

IP Cores

Altera and its partners offer an array of intellectual property (IP) cores that serve as building blocks that design engineers can drop into their system designs to perform specific functions. IP cores eliminate some of the time-consuming tasks of creating every block in a design from scratch.

Embedded Processors

Altera offers an embedded portfolio with a broad selection of soft processor cores.

• Nios II
  Nios II
  Nios II is a 32-bit embedded-processor architecture designed specifically for the Altera family of FPGAs. Nios II incorporates many enhancements over the original Nios architecture, making it more suitable for a wider range of embedded computing applications, from DSP to system-control.Nios II is...
  
   embedded processor
• ColdFire v1 core (free for Cyclone III FPGA).
• ARM
  ARM
  An arm is an upper limb of the body.Arm may also refer to:-Geography:* Arm , a narrow stretch of a larger body of water** Canal arm, a subsidiary branch of a canal or inland waterway** Distributary or arm, a subsidiary branch of a river...
  
   Cortex-M1 processor

Design Software

All of Altera's devices are supported by a common design environment, Quartus II design software. Quartus II software is available in a subscription-based edition and a free Web-based edition. It includes a number of tools to foster productivity. Some Quartus II software features include:

• SOPC Builder
  Sopc builder
  SOPC Builder is software made by Altera that automates connecting soft-hardware components to create a complete computer system that runs on any of its various FPGA chips...
  
  , a tool in Quartus II software that eliminates manual system integration tasks by automatically generating interconnect logic and creating a testbench to verify functionality
• Qsys, a system-integration tool that is the next generation of SOPC Builder. It uses an FPGA-optimized network-on-chip architecture that doubles the fMAX performance vs. SOPC Builder.
• DSP Builder, a tool that creates a seamless bridge between the MATLAB/Simulink tool and Quartus II software, so FPGA designers have the algorithm development, simulation, and verification capabilities of MATLAB/Simulink system-level design tools
• External memory interface toolkit, which identifies calibration issues and measures the margins for each DQS signal.

Competition

Altera's largest competitor is FPGA founder and market-share leader Xilinx

Xilinx

Xilinx, Inc. is a supplier of programmable logic devices. It is known for inventing the field programmable gate array and as the first semiconductor company with a fabless manufacturing model....

, who has been a long-time rival of Altera.

The two companies closest competitor is Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation is a United States based manufacturer of high-performance programmable logic devices . Founded in 1983, the company employs about 700 people and has annual revenues of around $300 million, with Darin Billerbeck as the chief executive officer...

, who represents less than ten percent of the market.

Other FPGA makers, Actel

Actel

Actel Corporation is a manufacturer of nonvolatile, low-power FPGAs, mixed-signal FPGAs, and programmable logic solutions...

 (now Microsemi) and QuickLogic

QuickLogic

QuickLogic Corporation is a manufacturer of Customer Specific Standard Products, or CSSP.Until 2007 they were a supplier of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays based on antifuse technology, making the devices one-time programmable...

, sell to a lower-end market segment that Altera mostly does not address.

In broader terms, Altera competes with ASIC

ASIC

ASIC may refer to:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a customised general-purpose device.* ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC...

, Structured ASIC, and Zero Mask-Charge ASIC companies like eASIC

EASIC

eASIC is a fabless semiconductor company offering NEW ASIC devices used in the production of customized silicon devices.- History :In 1999 eASIC Corporation was founded in San Jose, California, and incorporated in Delaware by Zvi Or-Bach, the founder of Chip Express...

. Moore's Law and improving software tools are rapidly expanding FPGAs' potential markets.

External links

• Altera official website
• Cornell ECE576 uses Altera FPGAs
• Nios processor community
• Altera Support
• Altera Profile at Wikinvest