() is a leading manufacturer of
Programmable Logic Device s. It is a member of the
NASDAQ-100 group of technology
Stocks and the
S&P 500 .
Altera is one of the pioneers of Programmable Logic, following notable early leaders
Signetics and
MMI in introducing PLDs. Altera develops many features that are geared towards system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) capability. Some of the more recent examples include embedded memory, embedded processors, and high-speed transceivers. The success in 130nm and 90nm product launches are good case studies. Altera's
Nios II and
Nios soft core processors and HardCopy II & HardCopy devices are extending Altera's reach in addressable markets, and put Altera in the world of embedded processors and structured
ASIC s respectively. Among its chief competitors are
Xilinx ,
Lattice Semiconductor ,
Actel ,
Quicklogic and
Atmel .
Altera also offers the software suite
Quartus II , aimed at the design and simulation of logic circuits. Although their software suite extensively supports
VHDL and
Verilog as primary languages, Altera is the developer of the
Hardware Description Language known as
AHDL .
- MAX 3000A : EPM3032A,EPM3064A,EPM3128A,EPM3256A,EPM3512A
- MAX 7000 : EPM7032B,EPM7064B,EPM7128B,EPM7256B,EPM7512B
- MAX II : EPM240,EPM570,EPM1270,EPM2210
(an Altera product)]]
- Nios II software embedded processor core.
While CPLDs and classic FPGAs were strictly Logic-Devices, with their newest devices the bigger FPGA-Vendors go more and more into high throughput
Digital Signal Processing applications. This trend is also driven by the so called
Electronic System Level Design. It's not really new, but it is gathering momentum, not only in Marketing and PR like the last 10 Years, but in real use out in the Industry. With todays Multi-Million-Gate Devices and their
System-on-a-chip -Architectures, and high-level synthesis tools combined with IP(-Reuse) one can implement complex systems competely in a single
FPGA instead of using a large
PCB with various chips and busses on it.
So in the future Vendors like Altera and Xilinx will compete more and more with companies like
Texas Instruments or
Analog Devices .
