Altera : High-Value Programmable Logic Solutions

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Altera Corporation is a premier designer and manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLD)—electronic components used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Founded in 1984 with the invention of the world’s first reprogrammable logic device, Altera supports a number of end markets with its array of custom logic solutions—including medical, military, test & measurement, telecommunications, automotive, and cloud computing.

Altera employs a 2,600-strong workforce spanning 19 countries. Altera primarily produces its parts via its partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) based in Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park—the largest pure-play semiconductor foundry in the world. However, just last year, Altera and computing giant Intel struck a foundry deal together. For the fiscal year 2013, Altera reported US$1.73 billion in revenues coming from over 12,000 customers.

Popular in the defense community, Altera products ensure survivability of an aircraft mission in the chance of avionics system failure. Altera produces solutions to problems that come up in the display unit, switch system, airborne computing, backup power, and head-up display systems of military aircraft. In 2014, General Dynamics declared Altera the Defender of the Year. Altera is heavily involved in the US Army’s Soldier’s Network program. The company supports the tactical voice and telecommunications technologies of General Dynamic C4 System’s latest two-channel secure voice military radio.

Altera operates technology centers in the following domestic and international locations:

Austin, Texas
San Jose, California
Hampton, New Jersey
Aswan, Egypt
Copenhagen, Denmark
High Wycombe, United Kingdom
Newfoundland, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Shanghai, China

Altera’s portfolio of goods includes the following hardware solutions:

Arria FPGAs: The mid-range family of Arria field-programmable gate arrays provide an even harmony of performance, power, and price. Performing at 20nm, they possess 96 transceiver lanes that deliver 3.6 Tbps of serial bandwidth.
Cyclone FPGAs: The Cyclone family of FPGAs are the lowest in cost and power, making them ideal for high-data, cost-sensitive purposes.
Stratix FPGAs: The Stratix family of FPGAs are the highest in density and bandwidth, making them perfect for high-end purposes.
MAX CPLDs: The MAX family of complex programmable logic devices comes equipped with on-chip flash storage and an internal oscillator.
HardCopy ASICs: The HardCopy family of application-specific integrated circuits is the industry’s only 40-nm system-capable ASICs engineered with an FPGA-based design flow.

For the advancements it made in the industry, Altera took home the top honors of “Design Team of the Year” and “Ultimate Product – Software” at the 2014 EE Times and EDN Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards.

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