Intel is looking to new markets and for opportunities . One of these opportunities was the acquisition of programmable arrays FPGA Developer - the company Altera.
At first, it looked great. As part of Altera, Intel gets access to arrays with advanced production at the time of 14-nm technology standards . It gave a huge advantage over the main (and only serious on the FPGA market) competitor - Xilinx company . Unfortunately, problems with the practical development of mass production of 14-nm solutions did not allow Intel to serve not only Altera orders, but even itself.
Intel has postponed the start of production with the standards of 10 nm at the end of next year. As with its pipelines will go to 7-nm chips in general are not expected. But TSMC promises and is likely to fulfill the promise to begin production of 10-nm Xilinx matrices in the first half of 2017, and the 7-nm - in the first half of 2018.
The decisive advantage of the process technology for the FPGA-matrices have been tested in practice at the time of development of 40-nm technology standards. Historically, Xilinx has worked with UMC company, and Altera - with TSMC. The UMC company has slowed down with the development of 40-nm process technology and Altera FPGA has become the market leader, although this was in the lead company Xilinx. Immediately thereafter, Xilinx began to work with TSMC and stage of mass production of 28-nm solutions Altera surpassed again. Then Altera has decided to seek its fortune in Intel. Intel has lost pace with the development of new technological processes, and it was forced to slow down Altera.
By the way, Intel company may also buy Xilinx. However, now it will cost much more than a year ago.