Re: Intel? Seriously?!?
There are two major suppliers of large FPGAs, Xilinx and Altera. Intel aquired Altera (and I've just noticed someone remarking on AMD buying Xilinx) so this is a logical next step in the evolution of programmable logic.
The danger to Intel comes from the defense oriented nature of the work. Most people don't think of Ferranti in the UK as a major supplier of semiconductors (and they even had one of the earliest 16 bit microprocessors). For all I know they or their successor companies are still making them but they're not a significant force in the industry because military contracts tend to be lucrative backwaters -- well paid but a dead-end for competitive product designs. The temptation is to shed -- hive off or outsource -- all those annoying low margin commercial ventures and just focus on the high margin product. After all, what's the point of breaking your neck trying to wring profit out of a $5 commerical part when there's a ready market for parts at $2K or more a pop?
(FWIW -- Xilinx used to be a staple at where I worked. It decided it wasn't interested in commercial work, suport withered, tools became expensive and so on. Customers had to put up with it, I suppose. Except that the last project I did in this area was conversion of existing product to Lattice. The parts were cheap, plentiful and Lattice was hungry for the business.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
