FPGA twins tit for tat, the fight between Xilinx and Altera overlord

In the semiconductor industry, everyone's most common war of words, in addition to Intel and AMD, has evolved to current Intel and ARM, and they are the two dominant players in the PLD field: Xilinx and Altera. In the past ten years or so, the two have never ceased their fighting. The industry experts or engineers are still controversial about the advantages and disadvantages of the two, and they are increasingly intensified, precisely because of their considerable strength in this field. It is still difficult to distinguish.

As ASIC/ASSP R&D costs have skyrocketed, their market share has gradually been replaced by FPGAs. Obviously, FPGAs have become lucrative "military weapons." Xilinx and Altera are the leaders in the PFGA industry. Xilinx and Altera are tit for tat in the field of FPGA and even PLD. Since the two sides have competed for a long time, FPGA dominance has changed from time to time between the two parties.

According to relevant data, the PLD market growth rate from mid-2008 to mid-2011 was 10.80%, which was about 4% higher than the semiconductor market growth rate of 6.50%. It can be seen that the PLD market is still in spite of the economic and financial crisis. The rapid growth in the semiconductor industry has kept the market potential of PLDs not to be underestimated.

At present, Xilinx is still the leader in the PLD market, accounting for about 40% of the market share, and about 30% of Altira. The difference is not significant. From another angle analysis, Xilinx and Altella both have a PLD market share of more than 70% of the global market, and Xilinx and Altra have an absolute dominant position in this field. Predictably, Xilinx and Altra will determine the major advancement of PLD/FPGA technology in the future.

Who will break the dominance of Xilinx and Altera?

The Xilinx and Altera companies face some DSP vendors that have established a solid market position. Some small FPGA manufacturers are developing new technologies that will break the hegemony of Xilinx and Altera.

DSP applications are very broad, such as MP3 players, cellular phones, and home entertainment systems. The key advantage of Xilinx and Altera entering the DSP market is that FPGAs can control the logic of the circuit at the gate level. FPGAs can achieve speeds up to 1000 times that of dedicated DSPs by executing all of the algorithm's sub-functions simultaneously. Since DSP technology is critical to the future success of Xilinx and Altera, both parties are actively promoting a series of DSP-oriented FPGAs, cores, development kits, and other products and services. Turning to analog components such as DSPs, microprocessors, and transceivers naturally becomes the natural direction of programmable logic devices.

Xilinx and Altera fill a market gap that mainstream DSP vendors have not yet reached. Implementing DSP functions with FPGAs has caused Altera and Xilinx to compete with Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, and Freescale DSP vendors to some extent, but this competitive relationship is not straightforward. Xilinx and Altera do not provide products that directly replace DSP in every application.

Although in the DSP market, no small FPGA manufacturer is ready to challenge Xilinx or Altera, but given the rapid changes in this market, this situation cannot be sustained forever. Halfhill believes that Actel may cause problems for Xilinx and Altera. (Note: Actel is currently acquired by Microsemi Semiconductors.)

Actel, although the company has very little sales revenue and little market influence, it has an important innovation that the market leaders lack. Actel has a slightly different FPGA technology than Xilinx and Altera. One thing it can do is to encrypt the programming logic in the chip, and implementing encryption does not have a big impact on performance.

This seemingly insignificant technology may pose a threat to Xilinx and Altera in terms of soft cores. A soft core is a digital logic component that is inserted into an FPGA. Xilinx and Altera currently offer soft-licenses to customers for a nominal fee, in order to allow customers to use soft cores in the FPGAs they provide. Xilinx's soft core can only be used in Xilinx FPGAs, and Altera's soft core must be used with Altera FPGAs.

Actel has established a cooperative relationship with ARM by virtue of its unique technology. ARM supplies low-power microprocessors to mobile phones, portable MP3 players and other new products, which are also the target markets for Xilinx and Altera FPGAs. According to the agreement signed by Altecl and ARM, when customers purchase Actel FPGAs, ARM processor cores can be obtained without having to sign a license agreement with ARM. In other words, Actel has become a distributor of the ARM core to some extent. In fact, the cost of ARM licenses is reflected in the FPGAs sold by Actel.

Actel's encryption technology is an important factor in the cooperation with ARM, because ARM believes that its valuable intellectual property will not be tampered with, stolen by reverse design or copied from Actel FPGA.

Second, views on duo male hegemony Actel, etc. These FPGAs have a certain kind of technological competitiveness of the company may cause some trouble to the FPGA dual male, but in the short term the FPGA duo to dominate the world situation is difficult to change. Xilinx and Altera's struggle in the PLD field will be even more exciting in the foreseeable future. Xilinx's strategy is full of general trends, new product development, industry acquisitions, product line expansion, and development and improvement of FPGA applications in each segment. Ordering and steadily advancing; if Xilinx is a general, then Altera is a highly flexible and execution guerrilla, Altera's strategy and product development flexibility and speed to the market is eye-catching.

The next step is how to formulate a more comprehensive product strategy and quickly snatch the market share of the ASIC market and ASSP, which is believed to have become the consensus of Xilinx and Altera. In 2012, Xilinx accelerated its acquisition in the industry while holding high the “All Programmable” banner. It included the embedded Linux solution provider PetaLogix and the wireless backhaul solution provider Modesat Communications. It is worth noting that both vendors have outstanding performance in FPGA, embedded, and SoC technologies. Xilinx will significantly enhance the high degree of integration of FPGAs or SoC devices and provide customers with more comprehensive product solutions and technical support. It will play an important role in quickly seizing the ASIC, ASSP and embedded market segments in the future.

Xilinx's continuous advancement stimulates Altera's sensitive nerves, which makes Altera continue to make breakthroughs. This is a cycle of pain and joy. The semiconductor industry is full of many uncertainties, but the only certainty is that the most direct benefit of both competitions will be the group of engineers. On the road to full integration of all programmable and devices, the competition between Xilinx and Altera continues....