What Intel will do with Altera, a programmable-silicon IP gold mine

There are quite a number of news stories reporting the rumour of Intel acquiring field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip maker Altera. Let's look at what makes FPGA such an attractive market.  Worldwide there are only six important companies in this market of FPGA chips. They are Xilinx,  Altera, Lattice Semiconductor, and Microsemi, and the two new startups Tabula and Achronix. Though QuickLogic makes programmable silicon based chips, they are different compared what is so-called FPGA.  But the business model used by QuickLogic helps to understand how programmable silicon can be used for multiple applications.  FPGA/programmable silicon helps electronics engineers to redesign the physical-architecture and hardware of digital circuits including processor architecture, so that any change in requirements can be easily implemented without changing the chip or board. Then why not everyone use FPGA? Well, FPGAs are expensive and also consumes more power compared to standard logic chip. But at 14 nm, the power consumption issue of FPGA is not that significant because they do not consume that much high level of power for many number of applications. Depending on the volumes, FPGA cost can be bought down close to many standard logic chips which are also called ASICs. So at deeper nodes such as 16nm/14nm,  FPGA is lot more attractive in areas, which earlier...