Altera
Type	Public (NASDAQ: ALTR)
Founded	1983, public since 1989
Headquarters	San Jose, CA
Key people	Unknown
Industry	Integrated Circuits
Products	FPGAs, CPLDs, Embedded Processors, Structured ASICs
Revenue	~$1.28 billion/year
Employees	~2,600
Website	www.altera.com

Altera headquarters in San Jose

Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) is a leading manufacturer of programmable logic devices. It is a member of the NASDAQ-100 group of technology stocks and the S&P 500. Image File history File links Altera_logo. ... A public company usually refers to a company which is permitted to offer its securities (stock, bonds, etc. ... NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City. ... City nickname: Capital of Silicon Valley County Santa Clara County, California Area  - Total  - Water 461. ... Integrated circuit showing memory blocks, logic and input/output pads around the periphery Microchips with a transparent window, showing the integrated circuit inside. ... A field-programmable gate array or FPGA is a gate array that can be reprogrammed after it is manufactured, rather than having its programming fixed during the manufacturing — a programmable logic device. ... An Altera MAX 7000-series CPLD with 2500 gates. ... Revenue is a U.S. business term for the amount of money that a company earns from its activities in a given period, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. ... For the album by the Kaiser Chiefs see Employment (album) Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... A Web site (or colloquially, Website) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on a Web server, usually accessible via the Internet or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1234x792, 359 KB) The headquarters of Altera in San Jose, California. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1234x792, 359 KB) The headquarters of Altera in San Jose, California. ... NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City. ... A programmable logic device or PLD is an electronic component used to build digital circuits. ... The NASDAQ-100 is a stock market index of 100 of the largest domestic and international non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange based on market capitalization. ... A stock market is a market for the trading of company stock, and derivatives of same; both of these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately. ... The S&P 500 is an index containing the stocks of 500 Large-Cap corporations, most of which are American. ...

Altera is one of the pioneers of Programmable Logic, following notable early leaders Signetics and MMI in introducing PLDs. Altera develops many features that are geared towards system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) capability. Some of the more recent examples include embedded memory, embedded processors, and high-speed transceivers. The success in 130nm and 90nm product launches are good case studies. Altera's Nios II and Nios soft core processors and HardCopy II & HardCopy devices are extending Altera's reach in addressable markets, and put Altera in the world of embedded processors and structured ASICs respectively. Among its chief competitors are Xilinx, Lattice Semiconductor, Actel, Quicklogic and Atmel. Signetics, once a major player in semiconductor manufacturing, made a variety of devices which included integrated circuits, bipolar and MOS, the Dolby circuit, logic, memory and analog circuits and Motorola clone CPUs, some of which were included in the first Atari video games. ... Monolithic Memories, Inc. ... Nios II is the second-generation soft-core embedded processor after Nios from Altera. ... Nios is a soft configurable 16-bit processor designed to target FPGAs from Altera. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Xilinx, Inc. ... Lattice Semiconductor Corporation NASDAQ: [LSCC] is a leading manufacturer of high-performance programmable logic devices (PLDs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), programmable mixed-signal and interconnect products, related software and intellectual property (IP). ... Categories: Possible copyright violations ... Atmel ATMEGA32 microcontroller Atmel AT90S2333 microcontroller Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) is a manufacturer of semiconductors, founded in 1984 by George Perlegos. ...

Altera also offers the software suite Quartus II, aimed at the design and simulation of logic circuits. Although their software suite extensively supports VHDL and Verilog as primary languages, Altera is the developer of the Hardware Description Language known as AHDL. Quartus II is a software tool produced by Altera for analysis and synthesis of HDL designs. ... VHDL, or VHSIC Hardware Description Language, is commonly used as a design-entry language for field-programmable gate arrays and application-specific integrated circuits in electronic design automation of digital circuits. ... Verilog is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. ... In electronics, a hardware description language or HDL is any language from a class of computer languages for formal description of electronic circuits. ... AHDL or Altera Hardware Description Language is a proprietary Hardware Description Language (HDL) from Altera Corporation for programming their Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLD) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). ...

Device Family Lines

CPLDs

• MAX 3000A: EPM3032A,EPM3064A,EPM3128A,EPM3256A,EPM3512A
• MAX 7000: EPM7032B,EPM7064B,EPM7128B,EPM7256B,EPM7512B
• MAX II: EPM240,EPM570,EPM1270,EPM2210

An Altera MAX 7000-series CPLD with 2500 gates. ...

High-Performance, Fully Featured FPGAs

• Stratix: announced February 11, 2002
• Stratix GX: announced November 4, 2002
• Stratix II: announced February 2, 2004
• Stratix II GX: announced October 24, 2005
• Stratix III: announced November 8, 2006

A field-programmable gate array or FPGA is a gate array that can be reprogrammed after it is manufactured, rather than having its programming fixed during the manufacturing — a programmable logic device. ...

Low-Cost FPGAs

• Cyclone: announced September 23, 2002
• Cyclone II: announced June 28, 2004
• Cyclone III: announced March 19, 2007
• Arria GX: announced May 8, 2007

A 'Flex EPF10K20' FPGA (an Altera product)

A field-programmable gate array or FPGA is a gate array that can be reprogrammed after it is manufactured, rather than having its programming fixed during the manufacturing — a programmable logic device. ... ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (1395x993, 331 KB) Summary This is a an Altera Flex FPGA with 20,000 cells (a fairly old part). ... ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (1395x993, 331 KB) Summary This is a an Altera Flex FPGA with 20,000 cells (a fairly old part). ... A field-programmable gate array or FPGA is a gate array that can be reprogrammed after it is manufactured, rather than having its programming fixed during the manufacturing — a programmable logic device. ...

Structured ASICs

• HardCopy Stratix: announced February 4, 2002
• HardCopy II: announced January 24, 2005

This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

IP and Cores

In electronic design a semiconductor intellectual property core, IP block, or IP core is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or chip layout design and is also the property of one party. ...

Royalty-Free

• Nios II software embedded processor core.

Nios II is the second-generation soft-core embedded processor after Nios from Altera. ...

Design Software Products

• Quartus II
• Quartus II Web Edition
• SOPC Builder
• DSP Builder
• MAX+PLUS II
• MAX+PLUS II BASELINE

Competition

• Altera's major competitor is Xilinx.
• Further noteable Competitors in the field of FPGAs are Lattice Semiconductor, Actel, QuickLogic and Aeroflex.

While classic FPGAs were strictly Logic-Devices, with their newest devices the bigger FPGA-Vendors go more and more into high throughput Digital signal processing applications. This trend is also driven by the so called Electronic system level Design. It's not really new, but it is gathering momentum, not only in Marketing and PR like the last 10 Years, but in real use out in the Industry. With todays Multi-Million-Gate Devices and their System-on-a-chip-Architectures, and high-level synthesis tools combined with IP(-Reuse) one can implement complete systems in a single PLD instead of using a large PCB with various chips and busses on it. So in the future Vendors like Altera and Xilinx will compete more and more with companys like Texas Instruments or Analog Devices. Xilinx, Inc. ... A field-programmable gate array or FPGA is a gate array that can be reprogrammed after it is manufactured, rather than having its programming fixed during the manufacturing — a programmable logic device. ... Lattice Semiconductor Corporation NASDAQ: [LSCC] is a leading manufacturer of high-performance programmable logic devices (PLDs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), programmable mixed-signal and interconnect products, related software and intellectual property (IP). ... Categories: Possible copyright violations ... Digital signal processing (DSP) is the study of signals in a digital representation and the processing methods of these signals. ... Electronic System Level design, or ESL, is an emerging electronic design methodology which focuses on the higher abstraction level concerns first and foremost. ... System-on-a-chip (SoC or SOC) is an idea of integrating all components of a computer system into a single chip. ... PCB may refer to: Brazilian Communist Party (in Portuguese, Partido Comunista Brasileiro) Communist Party of Bolivia (in Spanish, Partido Comunista de Bolivia) Pakistan Cricket Board PCBoard, a bulletin board system software Police Complaints Board, which oversaw the system for handling complaints made against police forces in England and Wales until... Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), better known in the electronics industry (and popularly) as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, USA, renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. ... Analog Devices (NYSE: ADI) is an American multinational producer of semiconductor devices. ...

External links

• Altera official website
• Cornell ECE576 uses Altera FPGAs
• Nios processor community
• Altera Support