From the perspective of performance, Xilinx is the absolute leader in the FPGA market.

From the perspective of performance, Xilinx is the absolute leader in the FPGA market.

tenco 2019-04-24

Altera and Xilinx have been fierce competitors in the narrow market of FPGAs for 20 years. However, Peter Larson's research on the discounted cash flow method of the two companies shows that Xilinx is the absolute leader in the FPGA market.


Larson said that since the birth of the FPGA in the 1980s, it has undergone 30 years of development, and its power consumption, price and processing performance have been greatly improved. And has begun to replace some markets of microprocessors or ASICs. Coincidentally, Linley Gwennap, founder of Linely Group, also said that FPGAs have a great potential to replace DSP.

Larson said that since the birth of the FPGA in the 1980s, it has undergone 30 years of development, and its power consumption, price and processing performance have been greatly improved. And has begun to replace some markets of microprocessors or ASICs. Coincidentally, Linley Gwennap, founder of Linely Group, also said that FPGAs have a great potential to replace DSP.

Spend two flowers on each table. Larson's algorithm is not going to pay attention to it. Just look at a few key data:

With regard to the future of Xilinx and Altera, Larson said that the Xilinx company has brought more imagination, because it seems that Xilinx is involved in more popular areas.

For the wearable device market: It can be found in the InvenSense job posting that it is a Xilinx customer. (Request to use Xilinx's ISE). In addition, Xilinx CFO Jon Olson is a board member of Invensense.

For open source hardware: Startup Valent F(x) is planning an FPGA open source project on Kickstarter, Logi FPGA, which can provide more scalable features for Beaglebone Black or Raspberry Pi, including interfaces, processing performance enhancements or additions. The network communication protocol, etc., the company is using Spartan 6 FPGA.

3D printing market: Larson said at least on the 123 Circuits (), at least two products use the Xilinx solution.

Although Xilinx seems to be involved in several emerging industries in the future, Altera will never sit still. A few days ago, Altera and its subsidiary, Wind River, announced a strategic partnership to customize operating systems and development tools for the Altera SoC platform, after signing a foundry agreement with Intel in 2013. In the future, with the increasing influence of process factors, Altera's turnaround is not impossible. 

Tenco Technology