New old FPGA player Altera's Rebirth: The Future of Intel's Programmable Solutions Group

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Smart move: Intel names its new subsidiary, created through the spin-off of the "Programmable Solutions Group" (PSG), after Altera, the FPGA provider it acquired in 2015. Many customers and developers have good memories of that.

In the industry, Altera was never really gone. Even though Intel had acquired the FPGA heavyweight in 2015 for a solid 16.7 billion US dollars and then did what corporations usually do after acquiring a company: They phase out the name of the purchased company, replacing it in product names with their own. This happened with the product lines Stratix, Agilex, Arria, Cyclone, and MAX, as well as the development software Quartus.

The approach can currently be well observed in AMD's acquisition of Xilinx: The name Xilinx is increasingly moving into the background and has already disappeared from most product designations.

Habits are hard to break – so they should be utilized

But with habits – Altera was founded in 1983 – it's a tricky thing: In the daily language of many developers, customers – and even Intel or former Altera employees – the brand name Altera remained present. Intel is now taking advantage of this: The newly spun off, FPGA solutions-focused Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) is – exactly – named Altera. This is undoubtedly a smart move.

According to Sandra Rivera, CEO of Altera, the new Altera is expected to operate quickly and autonomously in the market like a startup, but at the same time, it has the strong parent company Intel backing it up. With this, Intel aims to combine agility on one hand and reliability, continuity on the other, as Rivera emphasizes. She previously led the Data Center and AI (DCAI) department at Intel. Shannon Poulin, who serves as Altera's Chief Operating Officer, supports her. Poulin had previously held many roles within Intel's Xeon server CPU organization for decades.

Interestingly, as an independent subsidiary, Altera is not tied to Intel Foundry as a contract manufacturer for its products. Currently, Intel's own manufacturing subsidiary is producing, for example, the FPGAs of the Agilex-9 series in Intel-7 technology. In the future, TSMC, the world's largest chip contract manufacturer, could also come into play. Although, Intel Foundry will surely be the first port of call as a chip manufacturer for Altera.

Artificial Intelligence Everywhere

Altera operates in a lucrative growth market: In 2021, revenues for the "Total Addressable Market" (TAM) breached the $6 billion mark for the first time, and by 2023 had already reached around $9 billion – and are expected to increase to approximately $13 to $14 billion by 2028, if market oracles such as Global Markets Insights (GM Insights) and surveys by Intel are to be believed.

Perhaps even significantly more, if the use of AI continues to increase sharply. According to GM Insights, the market growth is due in part to the increasing use of technologies for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for edge computing applications in data centers - one of the main application areas for the fast FPGAs.

According to Rivera, some analysts see potential for an additional about 3 billion US dollars in the year 2028 alone. Specifically, the chief says: "We know that AI is a tailwind for this market opportunity. One analyst forecasts that by 2028, an additional TAM of 3 billion dollars will be available for FPGA-based solutions." Personally, she considers this estimate to be rather conservative, "considering the pace of innovation and growth in the area of accelerated computing, for which FPGAs are naturally ideally suited." What is certain is that AI will "create more and more opportunities for FPGAs."

Slowed growth of the FPGA market

The truth, however, also includes that market growth will subside over the next few years – as indicated by the projected figures shown. Because even with assumed linear growth, the TAM in 2028 would have to be significantly larger than the stated 13 billion US dollars. Therefore, Altera is to gain shares in a market that is apparently subject to a certain level of saturation.

In doing so, the company must compete against established competitors, most notably market leader AMD/Xilinx with its very strong FPGA portfolio. In the low-range segment, Lattice Semiconductor has carved out a good position. Microchip is strong in specialty applications such as aerospace. And Achronix has also established itself as a solid player.

New FPGA models with integrated AI processors

AI, as described, is also a major theme for Altera. In the webcast presenting Altera as a new company, Rivera advertised the so-called "AI infused" fabrics of its FPGAs, i.e., programmable components with integrated AI processing blocks. The first model to be equipped with this technology is the new Agilex-5 series, with models from other series to follow. They will directly compete with products from the market leader AMD/Xilinx.

According to Rivera, some of the new Agilex models, such as the high-performance FPGAs of the Agilex-9 series, are already in serial production, with Altera partly already supplying customers with test samples. The Agilex-9 devices target high-end applications such as acceleration cards for servers and switches in data centers, but they are also used in other products like circuit simulators and radar – thus, applications that require mixed-signal FPGAs with high data throughput. They also offer an integrated high-frequency path for the processing of radio signals.

According to Rivera, the F and I models of the Agilex-7 family are currently being prepared for mass production. With, according to Altera, twice the fabric performance per watt compared to competing FPGAs, they are tailored to high-bandwidth computing applications such as data centers, networks, and defense. Altera can already boast over 300 design wins for this product line, says the Altera CEO. Further, particularly energy-efficient models of the series are in the pipeline.

AI-ready: "AI infused" FPGA components

The FPGAs of the Agilex-5 series are frequently mentioned in the presentation. These have been sampled since the end of 2023 and had "the most extensive Early-Access Program in Altera's history" – with hundreds of customers. The official introduction of the series is expected in April this year. According to Rivera, the FPGA fabric of this series is "the only fabric in the industry to be permeated by AI" ("AI infused"), which is why the devices would be particularly well-suited for example for inference processing. Unfortunately, Rivera remained vague on what exactly that means. With "class-leading performance and 1.6 times better performance per watt compared to competing products," the device is aimed at embedded and edge applications.

Still missing is the low-end family Agilex 3: This targets energy-efficient and cost-optimized cloud, communication, and intelligent edge applications and is expected to hit the market later this year.

According to their own statements, suitable development boards for the Agilex-5 FPGAs are ready to launch, specifically the AX-E5 "Eagle". These are intended to facilitate the development of their own designs at early stages, so that users can quickly bring their projects to series production. (me)