In an interesting branding move, Intel renamed its programmable solutions group to “Altera” and reestablished it as an independent company.
Intel's $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera in 2015 was one of the biggest deals in the tech industry at the time. Now, the newly independent Altera, led by CEO Sandra Rivera and COO Shannon Poulin, aims to expand its product line and assert its presence in the competitive field-programmable gate array (FPGA) market.
So how did Intel come up with this new name? According Serve at homePatrick Kennedy, who describes it as an 'incredible brand move', “At a dinner last year, Sandra Rivera, the new director of Altera, asked what it should be called. She said that given the lifespan of the products and the fact that a considerable number of their FPGAs still say Altera, it should be called Altera again. I'm reasonably sure I had no influence on the process, but it seems like Intel followed similar logic. “Many people in the industry still call Intel's FPGA business Altera and AMD's FPGA business Xilinx, as both companies had positive brand values.”
Greater independence
While Intel's merger with Altera in 2015 significantly expanded its reach, especially in the data center sector, Intel now believes Altera would fare better as an independent entity.
Rivera said, “As customers face increasingly complex technology challenges and work to differentiate themselves from their competitors and accelerate time to value, we have the opportunity to revitalize the FPGA market.”
Altera FPGAs are versatile tools, capable of adapting to rapidly evolving standards and technologies without the need for expensive application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). They are used in a wide range of sectors, from traditional areas such as communications and data centers, to emerging fields such as AI.
The separation gives Altera greater independence and allows it the freedom to use other foundries more frequently than when it was part of Intel, although it will continue to use Intel Foundry for the contract chipmaker. As Tom Hardware This agreement reportedly ensures Altera's ability to offer its customers FPGAs produced at competitive nodes, along with supply predictability.
