Industry Expert Blogs

What is the involvement of Intel with programmable logic really all about? Two startup vendors, Achronix and Tabula, have indicated that Intel is acting as a foundry for them. After reading many column inches in the technical press, I remain unconvinced.

Foundries such as TSMC, UMC, and Toshiba have undoubtedly gained benefits from processing FPGA wafers for Altera and Xilinx (this site's sponsor). FPGAs are large and have regular structures that are highly visible to test machines. This allows foundries to locate any area of failure on a die quickly and efficiently during testing to debug their process. Of course, the foundries also benefit when Altera and Xilinx start selling the parts in volume.