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Xilinx in an ARM-fueled post-Altera worldSemiWiki - Don DingeeJun. 30, 2015 |
When the news broke about the on, off, and on-again Intel-Altera merger a few weeks ago, I checked off another box on my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon scorecard. That plus a $5 bill gets me a Happy Meal at McDonalds, but in a post-Altera world, it might be worth more.
On January 16, 2008, I’m sitting in a meeting with some Intel strategic marketing types discussing the embedded market. It’s a brain-picking session with Intel asking open-ended questions about trends and the competitive landscape – no NDA, because Intel isn’t sharing their information. I casually mention the concept of “SoC reconfigurability”, the idea of an FPGA sitting next to a processor core to accelerate the last inch of I/O. Lots of looking at each other and writing notes, not a lot of response, and no detailed architectural follow-up questions.
