Intel inks $8bn debt deal, preps for Altera buy Intel has bumped up its debt levels by $8bn (£5.2bn) to $20bn (£16bn), ahead of its $16.7bn (£10.4bn) gobble of data centre chip outfit Altera. The Chipzilla admitted to taking on huge debt levels during its third-quarter results conference call. During the three-month period it generated revenues of $14.5bn (£9.4bn) and a …
Quite right. Altera are in the business of software configurable hardware. Data centres may use this because you can design custom hardware for specific tasks that are highly parallel, but it's not applicable to all tasks, is far from easy and is slower/more power hungry than ASICs. Conversely Altera hardware is in demand by engeneers for small run, high performance device designs (the millatary love them for example).
Not just small runs. The increasing engineering costs of getting an ASIC into production, and the time it takes, mean that FPGA's have eaten into increasingly large slices of the custom logic chip pie.
Benefit of this deal for Altera is they will have direct access to cutting edge chip manufacturing technology.
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