Multiple financial news sources are reporting today that talks between Intel and Altera have ended. According to multiple sources, Altera declined Intel’s offer and the two companies have ended negotiations.

For the rest of the FPGA industry, this may be a bit of a disappointment. Other FPGA vendors we’ve talked with were optimistic that an Intel takeover of Altera would be good for the other FPGA players – altering and narrowing Altera’s focus, creating uncertainty among Altera’s existing customers, and disrupting the company’s existing development projects. Now, apparently, they’ll have to continue to compete with the Altera they already know.

This does not change our view that FPGAs and heterogeneous/hybrid processing pairing FPGA fabric with conventional processors will soon revolutionize the data center in terms of performance per watt. It does mean that the competition to win that emerging market will be more open and exciting.

We will now resume our regularly-scheduled programming.