Altera officially announces independence from Intel — the company strives to expand FPGA portfolio

This week, Altera officially raised a flag with its own name near its headquarters in San Jose, California, marking its spinoff from Intel and becoming an independent company. The newly formed company, which remains owned by Intel, will focus on expanding its FPGA offerings with greater flexibility while maintaining a strategic partnership with Intel.

"Today marks a proud milestone as we officially raise the Altera flag as an independent FPGA company," a statement by Altera published in an X post reads. "We are excited to drive the future of innovation with agility and focus, shaping the next era of FPGA technology on http://altera.com."

FPGAs, Altera's specialty, are particularly suited for adapting to rapidly changing technological needs without the high costs associated with ASIC development. Altera aims to strengthen its presence in established sectors like automotive, communications, and aerospace, as well as in emerging areas such as AI, cloud computing, edge technologies, and 6G.

Regarding AI, FPGAs are well-suited due to their flexibility and lower costs for adding new instructions and data formats. In addition to custom AI applications, FPGAs can be used to simulate upcoming AI processors before implementing them in silicon. Furthermore, Altera's FPGA AI Suite integrates with frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch, allowing developers to build optimized solutions that are compatible with industry standards.

Although now independent, Altera intends to maintain a close relationship with Intel Foundry, which will manufacture its chips using competitive production nodes. This collaboration ensures reliable supply chains while also granting Altera the freedom to work with other foundries, enabling it to broaden its manufacturing options and remain competitive. If the company's strategy succeeds, an initial public offering (IPO) could follow.

When Intel acquired Altera for $16.7 billion in its largest acquisition in 2015, the company pinned a lot of hopes on the FPGA developer as a way to diversify its revenue streams and possibly enhance its position in the datacenter. Now, Intel hopes that Altera will be successful as an independent entity, which could enable it to gain some additional cash during the IPO.

Altera will be led by CEO Sandra Rivera and COO Shannon Poulin.