The online community for MiSTer FPGA enthusiasts
https://misterfpga.org/
I've seen a few news's articles around recently such as this:
https://www.eejournal.com/article/intel ... ng-altera/
I wonder what this means for our beloved DE10-Nanos and if/what Altera may or may not do going forward. Maybe a new FPGA dev board post-Intel?
Opinions/predictions please!
Not having the financial backing and access to one of the largest fabs on the planet is not a good sign for Altera.
Getting out of the chips business to more or less become a foundry is not a good sign for Intel.
AMD, on the other hand, appears to be happy.
rhester72 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 11:32 amNot having the financial backing and access to one of the largest fabs on the planet is not a good sign for Altera.
Getting out of the chips business to more or less become a foundry is not a good sign for Intel.
AMD, on the other hand, appears to be happy.
AMD, Intel and Nvidia have been more focused on the Pro and Industrial markets for years rather than consumer
Really the biggest player now is Nvidia and they only own GPU tech which is some feat
Altera products are fabbed at TSMC and were never taken internal to Intels foundries, it was possibly not worth the investment in retooling for a different process and they have a good wafer deal at TSMC especially on 28nm
Neither Intel or AMD have done much with their FPGA buy outs so far tbh but it is a very niche product and market
I cant see anything happening to the Cyclone line yet its already a decade old and still popular
I doubt that Intel ever saw much opportunity beyond a perceived expanding market with high margins that they could milk. Certainly, the low end is no longer under their control, and margins are much lower than they once were in that segment.
Spinning off a portion of the company is a way for them to obtain some desperately-needed cash for their other needs; this business is still profitable, so it has a better chance of selling, and it never became "core" to their other products.
I see no particular change to DE10-Nano nor Altera's direction for at least 2 years.
I do. There's zero benefit to Intel to continue the FPGA education program that made the DE-10 Nano possible in the first place. I suspect the very last of them to ever be made has already been manufactured and is in inventory.
This, obviously, could have a profound medium-to-long-term impact on MiSTer.
Altera (or whatever the separated entity will be called) will still need to promote their devices, so there will continue to be a Terasic relationship (as there has been since prior to Intel's purchase), and there will continue to be development boards. They will continue to make and sell FPGAs, and Intel will still own a substantial portion of the company after spin-off. And on top of all that, Intel's announcement implied that the spun-off company would be better positioned to deal with market forces, especially at the lower price points.
Here is another article which seems to express a different aspect of the same press conference:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/03/ ... _fpga_biz/
Pricing however - especially pricing based on marketing dollars - will depend on what products they want to push, and you are right to say that Cyclone V SoC won't be their sweetheart forever.
But the divestiture is planned "within the next two to three years", so they will have a lot of other things to think about (governance, corporate direction, product roadmap, etc.) between now and then. This is why I set the 2 year timeline I did in my message above.
rhester72 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 7:55 pmI do. There's zero benefit to Intel to continue the FPGA education program that made the DE-10 Nano possible in the first place. I suspect the very last of them to ever be made has already been manufactured and is in inventory.
This, obviously, could have a profound medium-to-long-term impact on MiSTer.
The point of the education programs is to get young engineers to get used to using Intel/Altera FPGA so they remain relevant. Which they aren't in any danger of not being relevant anytime soon, they are still number 2 in market share in FPGAs, well ahead of Lattice who is number 3. The discount (probably still profitable even then) is what is called a "loss leader" in pricing strategies. It's pretty normal. They are bringing people in the door with a 5 dollar margarita so they buy chips and a burrito as well.
I wouldn't be concerned about this move, it sounds like a good idea to decouple from Intel's management who are probably being more conservative, not taking enough risks.
rhester72 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 11:32 amNot having the financial backing and access to one of the largest fabs on the planet is not a good sign for Altera.
Getting out of the chips business to more or less become a foundry is not a good sign for Intel.
AMD, on the other hand, appears to be happy.
On the flip side AMD bought Xilinx, and TSMC is killing Intel in fab tech lately.
And yeah Intel trying to become a foundry only sounds pretty suicidal.
Not sure this is good for the de10 nano specifically, but people had to expect that dev board to go away eventually. Due to natural product cycles if nothing else.
rhester72 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 7:55 pmI do. There's zero benefit to Intel to continue the FPGA education program that made the DE-10 Nano possible in the first place. I suspect the very last of them to ever be made has already been manufactured and is in inventory.
This, obviously, could have a profound medium-to-long-term impact on MiSTer.
Supplies of the DE-10 have been improving by some number this year. Mouser and Digikey has had large deliveries
You have to factor in COVID hammered silicon production worldwide and it's only been recovering in the past six months or so.
The company when spinned off will probably get the wafer contract with TSMC too and with the pricing, capacity and yields on 28nm I can't see the Cyclone line going away for some time
Terasic has found a nice niche for their DE-10 board and it's heavily subsidised by various companies not just Intel. The college program will just be renamed back to Altera or whatever they call it
Just look at all the brands on the board is one example
The DE-10 is really a Terasic product and as long as the cyclone V is still produced and there is demand i cant see Terasic stopping production
Mouser currently has 571 in stock ready to ship
I'm specifically referring to the subsidy claim...because it's not subsidized and never has been. There's no need to. The pricing is on-target for the capabilities.
Even when it was half of the current RRP £99+VAT ?
All the companies on the board either pay to have their name on it or give discounts to Terasic for parts
It only take a few moments to confirm that all those names on the board are partnered with Terasiic just like intel, so Terasic will be getting better pricing on parts. It's all on Terasics website
Intel must be producing the Cyclone V used exclusively for Terasic too as it's end of life being a decade old and oddly they choose to supply the automotive version. They will have a wafer contract with TSMC to use up though
The only suppliers of the chip itself now are charging more than Terasic do for whole DE-10 board
OK...I give up. If people want to go on believing it after it being shot down time and again for three years, it really makes no difference whatsoever (to me, or Terasic, or Intel, or Altera, or anyone else frankly). I was just trying to stop the spread of misinformation.
If students learn how to use these technologies from these companies, the companies stand to gain more influence among young engineers, and it helps round out their sales. The branding thrown on the box and materials that come with the DE10-Nano aren't that unusual for dev boards, especially educationally-targeted ones.
To be honest, the word "subsidize" is often totally misused. It's a claim that makes it sound like Intel takes a loss on each one sold. Believe me when I say that individual chip pricing on DigiKey/Mouser/etc... has basically zero to do with the volume pricing when a contract order for 10s of thousands of chips is set up. Intel likely is giving Terasic a discount for promotional purposes, but that doesn't mean they are hurting their bottom line and selling them at or below cost.
rhester72 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 12:21 pmOK...I give up. If people want to go on believing it after it being shot down time and again for three years, it really makes no difference whatsoever (to me, or Terasic, or Intel, or Altera, or anyone else frankly). I was just trying to stop the spread of misinformation.
You have not provided any proof to the contrary though
Anyone can access the information about Intel's FPGA program, Terasic partners and current information on Cyclone V supply and pricing
It's very challenging to prove a negative.
That being said, @aberu got it exactly right. I do not think the word means what you think it means.
So all these years of back and forth… have been about the perceived definition of the word ‘subsidized’ ?
If/when I have ever made a statement using the word, I have intended it to mean that Intel is providing the chips on more favorable terms than a similar-volume product, on the basis that it is a vehicle for marketing. This is a standard practice in business.
To be sure, none of us knows the volumes Terasic sells.
None of us knows the pricing that Intel would charge a regular customer for that volume.
None of us knows the actual pricing that Terasic receives for that volume.
None of us knows the raw cost-of-materials for the chip.
None of us knows the baked-in cost of the chip after cost-of-sales, EBIDTA and other expenses.
So none of us knows for certain whether Intel is selling at a loss - or even by what definition ‘loss’ would be defined - but I don’t suppose that any of us actually assumes that they are… just that they are selling at lower margins than would normally be possible otherwise.
So, all of this talk of whether they are ‘subsidized’ or not is not provable by any of us, but the assumption that more favourable terms are provided due to marketing, is a perfectly reasonable one, until it can be demonstrated otherwise.
Anyway, it’s also less clear that Intel is providing such preferential pricing recently, after the boards nearly doubled in price in the couple of years. I’d be inclined to say that they are no longer receiving preferential pricing.
Intel will be supplying the chips on favourable terms seeing as they are EOL so are fabbing them just for Terasic as they are partners and the DE-10 is used in Intel's college program so will want to keep pricing as low as possible. Similar to what we see with the Pi Foundation. We have seen both raising pricing in the past couple of years due to the issues caused by COVID
If that is not Intel subsidising a product I don't know what is
We can roughly work out the costs of standard wafers per process node, yields etc as there are online calculators for this but we don't know Intel's wafer deal with TSMC
Discount prices are likely not limited to Intel/Altera.
T.I., ISSI, Panasonic, Analog Devices, Linear Tech, Microchip and Wurth logos are advertised underside the DE10nano.