Robin, Altera's strength going forward is going to be in its 20k gate density parts and above. Xilinx is having problems getting anything larger than 28K parts to market. You're correct that MAX 7K has been and probably still is biggest revenue driver for ALTR. You made no mention of FLEX Family. FLEX 8K is very popular family (2500 - 16,000 gates), probably lowest cost per gate in the market. FLEX 10K seeing lots of design wins. ALTR is shipping 50K devices FLEX10K50 today.
As far as ALTR kicking XLNX's butt. Perhaps an exaggeration, obviously, Xilinx is market leader, good technology, large installed base....lots of loyalists in engineering community. But, Altera has been gaining significant market share on Xilinx and actually surpassed them in Q1.
Altera may have the best tools in the industry and definitely has the edge in density over Xilinx. ALTR is having a very good Q4. Forecast that ALTR will overtake XLNX for #1 spot in 1997.
As far as AMD goes, I do not see as a big threat to Altera. They finally got a good part to market with the MACH V family, however they are 2 years behind ALTR MAX 9000, and their development tools (MINC) not comparable to MAX+PLUS II. Also MACH has poor device utilization.
Regards |
