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Technology Stocks : Altera -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ms. X who wrote (1540)	2/9/1998 10:06:00 AM
From: shane forbes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2389

From seminews.com : Motorola gets a jump... Here's a hot new product coming. In mid-February, Motorola Semiconductor will unveil a ColdFire CPU chip that will have an on-board field-programmable gate array (FPGA.). This combo opens a new product line for Motorola and represents the leading edge of a new trend in programmable logic, one that could sweep much of the high-end programmable logic business into the hands of standard-product IC vendors. The chip maker reportedly has combined a ColdFire core with an array of its Pilkington-derived, SRAM-programmable FPGA logic, Peter Clarke and Ron Wilson report in EE Times. Putting the two cores on one die will allow embedded-computing designers to put custom bus interfaces, peripheral modules, and related functions on the processor chip, without the area, speed, and power penalties of a multichip core. With Lucent close behind Lucent Technology will be right on Motorola's heels with on-chip FPGA. It is also preparing a family of standard-product ICs with field-programmable regions on the dice, according to EE Times. Lucent will be supplying the communications and mixed-signal cores it has in house with an area of programmable logic. Earlier attempts at application-specific programmable logic were notable failures. Altera and Xilinx are skeptical of the prospect of integrating hard cores into FPGAs. "We don't see a real market opportunity for diffused cores on FPGAs," a Xilinx official said recently. But it is the opposite trend--integration of FPGA onto standard products--that is growing. It is becoming easier for MPU, DSP, and mixed-signal vendors to get FPGA technology than it is for FPGA companies to get into their businesses.