Altera and Intel Corp, on Monday said they had have entered into an agreement for the future manufacture of Altera FPGAs on Intel’s 14 nm tri-gate transistor technology. These next-generation products, which target ultra high-performance systems for military, wireline communications, cloud networking, and compute and storage applications, will enable new levels of performance and power efficiencies not otherwise possible.

 “Altera’s FPGAs using Intel 14 nm technology will enable customers to design with the most advanced, highest-performing FPGAs in the industry. 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,” said John Daane, president, CEO and chairman of Altera.

 Altera’s next-generation products will now include 14nm, in addition to previously announced 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. 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,” said Brian Krzanich, chief operating officer of Intel.  

Adding this world-class manufacturer 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.

Despite pact with Intel, Altera will continue to work with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to make its popular FPGAs. TSMC is Altera’s primary foundry, supplying a wide array of processes to fulfill Altera’s product portfolio, including soon-to-be released 20nm products, existing mainstream products, and long-lived legacy components. Altera is fully engaged with TSMC on developing products based on next-generation process technologies. 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. 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,” said Mr. Daane.

Tags: Altera, Intel, Semiconductor, TSMC, FPGA, 20nm, 14nm, Business