Article: Behind The Intel-Altera Deal

The potential, and the pitfalls, to making this acquisition work.

by Ed Sperling

Intel completed its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera this week, wrapping up what is arguably the semiconductor industry’s most important M&A transaction of 2015. Time and numbers will tell exactly how important.

There are two big challenges to making this deal work. One involves a big shift in direction away from simply shrinking features to include new architectures and packaging approaches. If the idea works, it could have a significant impact on performance, power and customization options, not to mention the tools and equipment required to build new chips.test.

Intel has been a staunch proponent of Moore’s Law from the get-go, and for good reason. Three years after Gordon Moore penned his famous observation in a 1965 paper, Moore co-founded Intel. As you might expect, Intel has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, beneficiary of Moore’s Law over the past five decades. It has perfected, with laser-like focus, the ability to get the next generation of processors out every couple years with a significant reduction in the cost per transistor.