Altera Looks Forward
Insight from an Industry Leader

In the rough-and-tumble, day-to-day, my-chip’s-bigger-than-your-chip schoolyard scrap that characterizes the top tier of the FPGA industry, a glimpse of vision, long-term insight and strategy are a rare breath of fresh air. We often feel that the two toughest competitors in the business spend too much time staring each other down and not enough time strategizing on how to conquer more of the vast landscape of logic design opportunity waiting patiently at the forefronts of their fiefdoms. However, when we sat down this week with Danny Biran, Altera’s Vice President of Product and Corporate Marketing, vision and insight are exactly what we got.

It seems that Altera has donned some panoramic goggles and is surveying the silicon situation with a calm and rational head, looking at the emerging role of programmable logic in the broader electronics industry. Altera’s vision starts at the very root of our core assumptions about modern electronics systems – the distinction between hardware and software. “We have all been programmed to believe that hardware is difficult to change and software is easy to change,” observes Biran, “but programmable logic breaks those stereotypes.” Of course, we’ve all become accustomed to the assumption that hardware is expensive to develop, has long development times, and is difficult to change once designed. Software is easier and faster to change, simpler to develop, and comparatively easy to deploy. We also generally assume and accept that software can be updated after the product is in the customer’s hands while hardware cannot.
[more]