They are targeting FPGAs at servers, not IoT
I don't know whether this will fly or not, but I think Intel wouldn't spend $16.7 billion without feeling pretty confident about this.
Yes, FPGAs are more power hungry than ASICs, but there are some tasks they can complete faster than a general purpose CPU. Basically it is similar to a dedicated accelerator but since it is programmable it can accelerate a lot of things. Yes, ASICs are faster but if you have specific code you need to run and either you modify it regularly or it is very company/industry specific, the cost of developing an ASIC to accelerate it could never be justified.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
