Altera

Infobox_Company
company_name = Altera
company_
company_type = Public (nasdaq|ALTR)|
homepage = [http://www.altera.com/ www.altera.com]
foundation = 1983, public since 1989
key_people = John P. Daane, CEO
location = San Jose, CA
industry = Integrated Circuits
products = FPGAs, CPLDs, Embedded Processors, Structured ASICs
revenue = $1.26 billion/year (2007)
num_employees = 2,651 (Dec. 2007)

Altera Corporation (nasdaq|ALTR) is one of the two major manufacturer of high-end PLDs (programmable logic devices), along with Xilinx. Altera is notable for its Cyclone and Stratix series of FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays), the MAX series of CPLDs, and its SOPC Builder software.

Current Device Family Lines

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

High-Performance, Fully Featured FPGAs

The Stratix families are larger, faster devices, with more features than the Cyclone families. They also cost more. The GX parts contain dedicated high-speed serial interfaces.

* 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

Low-Cost FPGAs

The Cyclone families are lower cost, smaller devices meant for less demanding applications.

* Cyclone: announced September 23, 2002
* Cyclone II: announced June 28, 2004
* Cyclone III: announced March 19, 2007
* Arria GX: announced May 8, 2007

Structured ASICs

* HardCopy Stratix: announced February 4, 2002
* HardCopy II: announced January 24, 2005
* HardCopy III
* HardCopy IV (E & GX): announced May 19, 2008

=IP and Cores=

Royalty-Free

* Nios II software embedded processor core.

Design Software Products

* Quartus II
* SOPC Builder
* DSP Builder
* MAX+PLUS II
* MAX+PLUS II BASELINE

Competition

Altera's major competitors are Xilinx and Lattice Semiconductor. The other FPGA makers, Actel and QuickLogic, sell to a lower-end market segment that Altera mostly does not address.

In broader terms, Altera competes with ASIC and Structured ASIC companies since its FPGA solutions are an alternative to those technologies. In recent times, FPGAs have become powerful enough to compete head-to-head with DSP (digital signal processor) devices, microcontrollers, and virtually every other embedded product. Moore's Law and improving software tools are rapidly expanding FPGAs' potential markets.

External links

* [http://www.altera.com/ Altera official website]
* [http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ece576/ Cornell ECE576 uses Altera FPGAs]
* [http://www.niosforum.com/ Nios processor community]
* [http://www.alteraforum.com/ Altera Support]
*