Intel to acquire Altera for ~$16.7B

[Dark Kaeser]

Confirmando rumores que já vinham de há uns meses para cá:

Intel to Acquire Altera

Enables New Classes of Products in High-Growth Data Center and Internet of Things Market Segments Combination Harnesses the Power of Moore’s Law to Accelerate Altera’s Existing Businesses

– Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced a definitive agreement under which Intel would acquire Altera for $54 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $16.7 billion. The acquisition will couple Intel’s leading-edge products and manufacturing process with Altera’s leading field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. The combination is expected to enable new classes of products that meet customer needs in the data center and Internet of Things (IoT) market segments. Intel plans to offer Altera’s FPGA products with Intel Xeon® processors as highly customized, integrated products. The companies also expect to enhance Altera’s products through design and manufacturing improvements resulting from Intel’s integrated device manufacturing model.

http://intelacquiresaltera.transact...tel-to-Acquire-Altera-Press-Release-FINAL.pdf


A Altera é conhecida essencialmente pelos FPGA, mas assim de repente a única razão, que eu vejo, para esta aquisição é diversos estudos a usarem FPGA como "co-processador" para determinadas funções, tal como se usa por exemplo GPU, DSP etc, mas daí a valer $16.7B.
Se bem que a Intel tem a sua linha Knight para o mesmo propósito.

Exemplo:

How Microsoft Is Using FPGAs To Speed Up Bing Search
http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/09/03/microsoft-using-fpgas-speed-bing-search/

Altera and Baidu Collaborate on FPGA-based Acceleration for Cloud Data Centers
http://newsroom.altera.com/press-releases/altera-baidu-fpga-cloud-data-centers.htm


Mas ultimamente entre aquisições e fusões, tem sido feitos grandes negócios, vide aquisição da Freescale pela NXP, e a mais recente aquisição da Broadcom pela Avago.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business...ip-companies-falling-mergers-and-acquisitions

 

[miguelbazil]

Mas o ganho de negócio é assim tão grande que justifique gastar esses biliões assim? A MS tem mais planos para os FPGA's nas arquitecturas deles?

 

[Worst News]

Presumo que sim para a Intel meter o nariz la ^^

 

[Nemesis11]

FPGA não é apenas algo que se pode usar em vez de um cpu ou gpu. São usados em muitos outros casos.
Quanto ao preço. Eles deram 54 $ por ação. Elas andavam a rondar os 48$, por isso é um preço normal.
A Altera no último ano teve 1.9 mil milhões de $ em volume de negócio.

Se quiserem ler sobre as razões para a Intel comprar a Altera, vejam estes artigos:
http://www.theplatform.net/2015/03/30/why-intel-might-buy-fpga-maker-altera/
www.theplatform.net/2015/06/01/how-intel-is-hedging-on-the-future-of-compute-with-altera-buy/

 

[senso]

FPGA's a sério são usadas no backend das internetz, quanto muito a procura por FGPA's de topo só vai continuar a subir, e a Altera já estava a usar a foundries da Intel, logo já era de se esperar uma aquisição dessas.

 

[Dark Kaeser]

Sim, os FPGA tem mais usos, estava a falar no caso concreto da Intel.

Acquiring Altera may help Intel defend and extend its most profitable business: supplying server chips used in data centres. While sales of semiconductors for PCs are declining, the data centre market is expanding as the use of data management and analytics increases because more businesses see the benefit of integrating these technologies into their own workloads.

The deal has also made ripples in the HPC community as a number of HPC centres are currently benchmarking the use of FPGAs in HPC. Recent reports have shown that the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Hartree and EPCC are all looking at FPGAs in studies concerning energy-efficient computing

http://insidehpc.com/2015/06/intel-to-purchase-altera-for-16-7-billion/

Em relação ao preço pago, o valor das acções disparou quando os rumores começaram em Março

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ALTR+Interactive#{}

 

[Dark Kaeser]

Intel's first processor with performance-boosting FPGA to ship early next year

Intel announced in June last year that it was working on a Xeon part with an integrated FPGA, and on Wednesday the head of its data center group, Diane Bryant, said the chip will arrive in the first quarter next year.

"We’ll be shipping it to the largest cloud service providers in Q1 so they can begin tuning their algorithms," she said during an on-stage interview at the Structure conference in San Francisco.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3006...ce-boosting-fpga-to-ship-early-next-year.html

 

[Nemesis11]

Vai ser interessante ver o que as grandes empresas vão fazer com um fpga no mesmo package de um Xeon. É que a tarefa de lhes dar uso fica somente do lado dessas grandes empresas. Vamos ver se os usos saem cá para fora e se podem ser úteis a clientes mais pequenos, forçando assim a Intel a vender estes Xeons+fpga a um publico mais largo.

 

[Dark Kaeser]

- Inventec FPGA SmartNIC C5020X Combines FPGA and Intel Xeon D

One of the great features is that we get the details around the Inventec FPGA SmartNIC C5020X. Here we can see that we have an Intel Xeon D-1612 with a 32GB SSD and 16GB of DDR4 memory. We have a PCIe Gen3 x8 connection to the Intel Stratix 10 DX 1100 FPGA. That Stratix 10 FPGA has its own 16GB of DDR4 along with providing 25/50GbE connectivity as well as PCIe Gen4 x8 connectivity.

https://www.servethehome.com/inventec-fpga-smartnic-c5020x-borders-on-dpu-territory-dpu/

 

[Nemesis11]

Ena, uma placa de rede com um computador acoplado. Até tem uma BMC para gerir a placa remotamente.

Já existiam placas de rede high-end com FPGAs, mas é interessante ver esta tendência de fazer processamento directamente na placa de rede, com enorme bandwidth.

Ainda é mais interessante a placa do artigo ao lado:

https://www.servethehome.com/silicom-fpga-smartnic-n5010-4x-100gb-with-hbm-onboard/

4 X 100 Gbits. Uma Intel Stratix 10 DX + 144 MB SRAM + 8 GB HBM + 32 GB DDR4 ECC + Dual Intel E810 NICs

Reparem que para alimentar esta "Besta" é preciso 2 conectores Pci-Ex 16x Gen4. Isto é, já se começam a encontrar os limites de Pci-Ex Gen4.

Outro detalhe interessante:

This solution offers an enormous amount of power and actually consumes up to 225W. Silicom has a few different options available, including a single slot and actively cooled versions.

Não é todos os dias que de vê uma placa de rede com 225 W de TDP.

Por ultimo, a Xilinx também mostrou há uns tempos algo parecido, mas apontando especificamente para o mercado 5G.

https://www.servethehome.com/xilinx-t1-fpga-for-oran-baseband-unit/

 

[miguelbazil]

Estamos a falar de um throughput máximo de 400 GB/s, é muita fruta... Não me admira que precisem de CPU's capazes a sério para fazerem switching a esse nível. Só a gestão de queues e pacotes a essa velocidade deve ser absurda.

 

[Dark Kaeser]

Intel Announces Intent to Operate PSG as Standalone Business​

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 3, 2023 – Intel Corporation today announced its intent to separate its Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) operations into a standalone business. This will give PSG the autonomy and flexibility it needs to fully accelerate its growth and more effectively compete in the FPGA industry, which serves a broad array of markets, including the data center, communications, industrial, automotive, aerospace and defense sectors. Intel also announced that Sandra Rivera, executive vice president at Intel, will assume leadership of PSG as chief executive officer; Shannon Poulin has been named chief operating officer.


Standalone operations for PSG are expected to begin Jan. 1, 2024, with ongoing support from Intel.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-oct-2023-news.html