Intel did not let Altera go; the deal is done

Intel being the world's largest semiconductor company and also the world's largest processor chip maker with cutting edge chip fabrication technology tightens (rather we say 'saves itself from loosening') its grip on the future high performance SOC market by agreeing to acquiring Altera at a price of US$16.7 billion. How will this affect the future of no.1 FPGA maker Xilinx? and also the second-biggest PC chip vendor AMD? By some chance if AMD and Xilinx merge that gives a befitting competition to the combination of Intel and Altera. Such a merger is hard to come through, but still Xilinx may have even more strongly branded position in FPGA market, just like Analog Devices able to strengthen its position in analog market even after Texas Instrument acquired National Semiconductor. When this writer asked Neeraj Varma, director of sales at Xilinx on this acquisition, He said "Xilinx continues to distance itself from the competition with a 3Peat across 28, 20 and 16nm products, ASIC-class tools and software-defined environments… and is building another multi-node scaling advantage by moving directly to 7nm in collaboration with TSMC."  "Intel’s acquisition of Altera will also give Xilinx the additional significant advantage of being the ONLY vendor with total focus, the best foundry, ARM strategic partnership, committed roadmap, and continuity of operations." He added. ...