Industry Expert Blogs

Altera is near sampling for its Arria 10, manufactured in a 22-nm TSMC process, and is hinting at architecture for its high-end Stratix 10, based on Intel's 14-nm Tri-Gate foundry service.  There are interesting changes ahead as Altera moves all its FPGAs to a new generation.

When FPGA companies move multiple families to a new generation, there is often an attempt to rationalize processes across different device types. But Chris Balough, who serves as Altera's senior director of SoC product marketing, said that there was a reason for using TSMC as a foundry for Arria 10, while relying on Intel for Stratix 10: optimizing device characteristics for a given market.  Arria will be used in applications where a careful balance must be made among real estate, performance, and cost, while Stratix 10 is for the type of application needing high-end RISC processing and transceivers operating up to 56 Gbits/sec.

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