Today, Intel announced that it has already finalized its acquisition of leading American manufacturer of programmable logic devices, Altera Corporation. Altera Corporation is also known as the leader in field-programmable gate technology. The deal will complement the chipmaker giant's top of the line product portfolio, and will also enable a new wave of products in high-growth data centers as well as Internet of Things market segments.
The deal worth US$16.7 billion marks as Intel's biggest buyout to date. According to reports, monolithic tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft currently use the chipmaker giant's Xeon processor for their computational works. However, some are further boosting them with Altera's field programmable gate arrays, also known as FPGAs, which are quite useful because they can also be reprogrammed. Further reports indicated that Intel will be selling the two pieces together in 2016, but the company's long-term goal is to combine both of them into a single chip.
"Altera is now part of Intel, and together we will make the next generation of semiconductors not only better but able to do more," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a press release. "We will apply Moore's Law to grow today's FPGA business, and we'll invent new products that make amazing experiences of the future possible—experiences like autonomous driving and machine learning."
Altera, on the other hand, will be operating as a new business unit called the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) under Intel, led by Altera veteran Dan McNamara. In addition, Intel is also committed to delivering a smooth transition for Altera's customers, and will also be continuing to support Altera's product line-up, such as FPGA, ARM-based System-on-Chips, and power products as well as their future development.
Furthermore, the new operation will be working closely with the chipmaker giant's Data Center Group and IoT Group in order to deliver the next generation of highly customized and integrated products.
