Intel to Purchase Altera?

[autobot]

For what I know from Google, the Intel Edison 500MHz dual core atom performs as good as quad ARM Cortex A7 RPi2, and the power dissipation is only a fraction of it.

Which means, if Intel integrates an Atom Z3770-like CPU with an Altera 150K LUT Cyclone V fabric along with Intel's 128M eDRAM, the combination can FUCK ALL SOC IN THE MARKET, while keeping the BOM below $200, which is pretty sweet for high-end users.

The combination you describe looks like a very good product, powerful, low power ,versatile,  very useful in embedded , although it can be improved a bit by adding another real-time core , i.e. one core running RTOS/bare with the other running linux.

Two big problems though -

1. is BOM below $200 low enough ? it seems very expensive.

2. Do people trust intel as a supplier for long living products after having bad history ? are people willing to use a product without alternative suppliers that is very hard to port from  ?

[andersm]

2. Do people trust intel as a supplier for long living products after having bad history ?

Intel have had long-life industrial products (eg. the 386ex was produced from 1994 to 2007). They also own Wind River, who is a big player in the embedded market.

[kfnight]

Oh, and I dearly hope AMD will NOT acquire Xilinx, because then we're royally screwed.

It'd be the other way around.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

2. Do people trust intel as a supplier for long living products after having bad history ? are people willing to use a product without alternative suppliers that is very hard to port from  ?

Nice you mentioned that! That would is my highest concern. Not depending on any single supplier of anything and avoiding all sorts of lock ins is at most importance in my opinion. However there are many engineers that are not as paranoid as I am.

Those that working on hardware  for big data centres (Google,Amazon,etc.) are simply ecstatic about this merger  Hope they won't be disappointed.

[Fantasma25]

I only hope that nobody else touches Xilinx and vice versa.

[timofonic]

I only hope that nobody else touches Xilinx and vice versa.

Oligopolies everywhere!

I would think in the worst case scenario.

Anyway, FPGAs worst thing is that they are as propietary than x86. They are the perfect match!

Seriously, there's need big competition in this field. Fully open FPGAs, Open Source tools in the way of GCC and flexible designs.