back to article Intel gobbles up chipmaker Altera in $16.7 BILLION splurge

Intel has subsumed Altera for $16.7bn (£11bn), ending months of “will they, won't they” takeover chatter. The acquisition will allow Chipzilla to get its mitts on Altera's field-programmable gate array (FPGA) tech – chips that customers can configure after purchase. The acquired unit will sit in Intel's bit barn division. The …

  1. David Goadby

    Intel will now look at ARM

    quote "develop Altera's ARM-based..." Altera are up to speed with ARM and Intel are losing out in the power conscious processor space. So, with cash left in the kitty, ARM must be a logical target for Intel now.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Intel will now look at ARM

      From a competition perspective, you are looking at a very slow advance through to the Ninth circle of hell where according to Messir Alighieri there is a large frozen area. Still, even Dante did not foresee Lucifer snowploughing that part.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: Intel will now look at ARM

        I doubt the monopolies commission would let that one through...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Intel will now look at ARM

          And most of the ARM license contracts have very heavy clauses about ARM being taken over - generally free perpetual rights to all the ARM tech you are using.

          Otherwise nobody would every buy an ARM license knowing that they could be bought out any day by your rival

    2. Mage Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Intel will now look at ARM

      Intel already had ARM.

      This will make zero difference to Intel's ARM strategy, it's about the FPGA

  2. phil dude
    Thumb Up

    interesting....

    A Xeon-phi with an FPGA inside - for some really whacky accelerated calculations.

    Of course it will be too expensive to be useful to amatuers...

    P.

    1. Alistair
      Boffin

      Re: interesting....

      Phil_dude:

      Lets shoot for Itanium with a suite of FPGA's attached.

      Now - *that* would rock!

  3. Mage Silver badge

    Lets shoot for Itanium

    Yes, Itanium needs put down.

  4. smartypants

    I designed a broken ALU with Altera

    At university we used Altera chips to allow us to design our own microprocessors. We designed our own instructions and flashed an altera chip with the logic, then stuck it on a breadboard and wired it up.

    After all that work, I was gutted to learn that my JMP instruction didn't work, so my microprocessor turned out to be little more than a glorified counting machine.

    This has little to do with the story, but I needed to write this down before the remaining brain cell holding this memory expired.

    Sorry.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They should buy Micron first then ARM then whatever is left of AMD for dessert.

  6. Joey M0usepad Silver badge

    heres the pulse.....

    Heres your finger - far from the pulse jammed up your ass :)

    Today Google renames itself to Alphabet , and the top story on el Reg is about a pc in a small box

    (edit) ok , i see they coverd it at 9.30 pm last night... if i knew how to delete a sarky comment id do it...

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like