In the blink of an eye, Intel's acquisition of Altera has been more than a year. During this time, what is the original altera become "digested", what is Intel growing?
First we review Intel acquired Altera's reason. Since the traditional PC market is stopped, the attempt to enter the mobile equipment market is not smooth, and Intel needs to steadily, and look for new growth points. The acquisition of Altera is a key step and is the technical reserve for Intel's long-term strategy.
Although Intel missed the huge mobile terminal equipment market, the good news is that the rise of mobile devices drives the growth of the data center / cloud computing market, and here is Intel's home. Although the status of X86 is still stable as a high-performance processor, there are always some competitors that have been in this profitable server processor market, and Intel can't be high enough.
Obviously, Intel cannot afford to lose the server market again. In order to keep this position, Intel decided to take a special measures to enhance your own skill: acquire Altera to get unique FPGA technology.
For high performance calculations, FPGA can be said to be a big pill. Although the FPGA itself is a high-power technology, its parallel calculation makes it unlike a loop like a processor, so it is more power consumption in the case of large load operations. All two of Altera and Xilinx claim that FPGA-based cloud computing performance can be 10 to 100 times higher than the processor.
Regardless of how FPGA manufacturers boast, FPGA is widely used in calculation and acceleration, which proves the unique value of FPGA in massive calculation applications. Integrating FPGA technology into its own products, Intel can further strengthen its technical barriers, and ensure that they can try to enter some promising emerging fields in the case of the server business monopoly, such as car automatic driving. And the Internet of Things.
The first line of FPGA vendors have only two, namely Xilinx and Altera. Xilinx has a good performance in these years, and the difficulty of acquiring it will be relatively large, and the price will not cost. In contrast, Altera's technology is also very good, and the price is easier to talk. Intel acquires Altera to be sympathy.
Intel's acquisition of Altera is not to see the profitability of the latter, but to see its FPGA technology, to take it for me, to digest it, so Altera has disappeared. Now, Intel has appeared a programmable solution division (PSG). Although personnel make up or have passed Altera, it is no longer independently, but it is necessary to obey the Intel's strategic layout.
Nonetheless, persons who pay attention to FPGA still want to know how Intel's PSG is planning: Which application areas are concerned? How does the technical road map? What is the change of the customer's policy? Intel PSG Product Marketing Senior Director Patrick Dorsey (previously served by Altera Product Marketing Senior Director) has learned to answer us in Beijing.
Dorsey said that FPGA has contributed to "benign circulation" in Intel growth. He quoted Intel CEO Brian Krzanich: "Intel plans to increase investment in products and technology, thereby increasing income, and FPGA is a key factor we can succeed." This benign circulation is reflected in multiple applications, Such as 5G Wi-Fi, Optical Network, Internet of Things, and Cloud Computing and Data Center.
Dorsey focuses on the FPGA car applications. He said that the future car will be a large data communication. It is estimated that by 2020, the amount of data consumed per day is 1G bit, and the data consumed by a car is 40,000 gits. From advanced auxiliary driving (ADAS) to some automatic driving, the automobile's demand for calculating capacity is exceeded by Moore's law, and the FPGA application can make up for this gap. In the automotive electronics system, FPGA is suitable for functions such as sensor fusion, machine learning, network fusion and safety logic.
Dorsey said that after several months of acquiring Altera, Intel implemented a strong investment in FPGA this year, R & D investment exceeded past any year. Now, PSG has increased by 30% of engineering designers, and the number of transceivers developers even turned.
Of course, Intel is not contributing to the development of FPGA technology. Instead, it will make FPGA technology contribute to Intel's development. The performance is in the technical road map, which is a discrete FPGA acceleration chip discrete from now on, transitions to the CPU wafer + FPGA wafer (SIP) in the same package to the final integrated CPU + FPGA chip (SOC). Dorsey said that the form of these products will have to coexist for a long time, as discrete devices are slightly poor performance, but higher flexibility.
Obviously, the CPU described above refers to the CPU of the X86 architecture because the SOC of the ARM processor + FPGA has long existed. The main battlefield of X86 CPU + FPGA is in the data center, not embedded calculations. Other manufacturers' ideas are just the opposite, expect to enter the data center through the Power processor + FPGA or ARM processor + FPGA. Because the X86 processor is Intel's foundation, X86 + FPGA is what it wants, and does not eliminate the possibility of breaking the ARM + FPGA product.
Intel's next-generation FPGA and SoC FPGA will support Intel architecture integration, approximately as follows: C38 use Intel 22nm process technology for industrial IOT, automotive and cell radiofrequency, etc.; C35 is Falcon Messa (mid-end) products Adopt Intel 10nm process technology for 4G / 5G wireless communication, UHD / 8K broadcast video, industrial IoT and automotive products; products with Falcon Mesa adopt Intel 10nm process technology for cloud and acceleration, Taibit Systems and high speed signal processing and other fields.
Finally, Dorsey said that since the FPGA is a long life cycle product, Intel has not interrupted with the foundry cooperation with TSMC, and the existing product will continue to be produced by TSMC. However, because Intel also provides an in-work business, there is a certain competitive relationship with TSMC, so these two manufacturers will not treat the other party as a long-term important partner. For old customers in Altera, if their industry is not in the field of Intel to focus, I am afraid they will not pay attention to Intel.
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