The unit will sit in Intel's newly formed Programmable Solutions Group, headed by former Altera vice president Dan McNamara. Intel has announced the successful completion of its $16.7bn deal to buy field-programmable gate array manufacturer Altera, as it begins to move away from the struggling PC market into IoT and data centres. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are essentially low-power computer chips that can be programmed by third parties to perform specific tasks in the field – for example, a car alarm or an automated teller machine. FPGAs crucially lower the cost barrier of entry for many, as product manufacturers may now access powerful computing without the expensive hurdle of funding one-off chip design. Intel has struggled to enter the mobile devices market, and although it remains strong in the data centre arena, there has been a move towards lower cost, lower-power consumption servers in that area too – such as those designed by ARM. With this deal Intel aims to gain a foothold in the full IoT stack, from device to cloud: low-powered, interned connected devices will frequently offload their heavy-duty processing requirements to massive data centres With Altera’s technology, Intel will be seeking to make a mark in both areas.
Intel has announced the successful completion of its $16.7bn deal to buy field-programmable gate array manufacturer Altera, as it begins to move away from the struggling PC market into IoT and data centres. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are essentially low-power computer chips that can be programmed by third parties to perform specific tasks in the field – for example, a car alarm or an automated teller machine. FPGAs crucially lower the cost barrier of entry for many, as product manufacturers may now access powerful computing without the expensive hurdle of funding one-off chip design. Intel has struggled to enter the mobile devices market, and although it remains strong in the data centre arena, there has been a move towards lower cost, lower-power consumption servers in that area too – such as those designed by ARM. With this deal Intel aims to gain a foothold in the full IoT stack, from device to cloud: low-powered, interned connected devices will frequently offload their heavy-duty processing requirements to massive data centres With Altera’s technology, Intel will be seeking to make a mark in both areas.