
The traditional FPGA market is abandoned - jamesbowman
http://www.xess.com/blog/extinction-level-event/
======
lvh
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that Intel is going to make these folks
work on something else because FPGAs don't grow that much. That makes little
sense; Intel isn't really hurting for more employees, and the FPGA engineers
can't necessarily be made to be productive on the higher-growth sections
cited.

Instead, it makes a lot more sense that Intel is going to try and make that
market more lucrative and larger instead. As a major chip manufacturer,
they're in a great position to ship FPGAs to tons of new customers. Chicken-
and-egg problems (you don't FPGA until you need to because it's not available)
have made FPGAs a niche element. However, OpenPOWER/CAPI have demonstrated
that you can get huge benefits from slapping FPGAs to existing general purpose
compute.

So; TL;DR: I don't think it makes sense to assume Intel is just going to
assume that market will stay what it is. Instead, they think they can make
that market better, and do more than Altera/Xilinx can do individually. In
that light, a purchase makes perfect sense.

(Disclaimer: I work for a company involved in OpenPOWER/OpenCompute and has
shipped hardware that does this.)

~~~
Retric
FPGA's are always significantly worse than dedicated HW. To sell them _in
bulk_ you need to be able to replace a wide range of chips you don't need at
the same time with a good enough solution. At the same time you need enough
speed you can't just simulate things on a general purpose processor.

That's a fairly narrow band and the real issue with FPGA's. A synthesizer for
example seems like a good fit, but well general processes are fast enough. If
we had a wider range of video codec's that might work, but again general
purpose processors are good and dedicated hardware can help for the mainstream
codec's.

Any ideas?

~~~
dv_dt
Anything that is needed to run in a pipelined data flow - particularly if the
cpu processing of that data would be non-trivial. One example might be video
processing (the kind that might go in all those automated cars on the
horizon). You might have one set of algorithms at initial release, but in
future releases one might change them.

Other examples might be crypto or compression/decompression, transcoding ..

~~~
tarpherder
Wouldn't a GPU outperform a FPGA in those cases?

~~~
dv_dt
It depends - for outright throughput for something the GPU is good at perhaps,
but if Intel is coupling the FPGA tightly to their CPU and it has access to
the memory bus and maybe some level of cache, then (I'm really speculating
here) it might be very advantageous for situations where you have small chunks
of data that you want to operate on with very low latency (lower latency by at
least two PCIe transfers, to & from the GPU, and likely another memory
transfer between the card local memory and the GPU).

Then there are also likely a some set of functions you can directly implement
on an FPGA that a GPU simply didn't elect to implement in its hardware or
would need to compose out of a number of operations.

------
PaulHoule
People are still scratching their head over this acquisition but here is my
take.

Intel has failed at phones not because "x86 sux" but because Intel makes a
small number of SKUs that are often different bins of the same design -- these
are heavily tuned in every way. Phone chips are not so optimized in terms of
process and design, but instead they are true "systems on chip" where a number
of IP blocks are integrated to produce something which is optimizable by
adding functional blocks.

Something FPGA based, whether it ends up in the datacenter or elsewhere, could
have a highly optimized FPGA block which is field configurable, so this gives
Intel something to compete with SoC vendors on their own terms.

One detail is the nature of the memory and I/O systems. FPGAs can move a huge
volume of data, so unless you upgrade the the paths in and out of the CPU/FPGA
area, the FPGA would be starved for bandwidth.

It would take one of two things for the FPGA market to expand based on these
developments.

First, if there was some "killer app" that sold a huge number of units, that
would help. The trouble here is that if you sell a huge number of units, you
might be better off making an ASIC functional block an integrating it into a
true SoC.

The other one is that (I think) FPGA development today is constrained by the
awful state of tooling. Pretty soon you will be able to pop a FPGA hybrid chip
into a high-end Xeon workstation and have one hell of a development kit in
terms of hardware, but without a big improvement in the tooling, very few
people will be able to really make use of it.

~~~
rwmj
I think your analysis of Intel's problem is spot on. But FPGAs have something
like (IIRC) 4% of the density of custom-designed ASICs. Can Intel's superior
process create FPGAs at such small scales to overcome this rather large
disadvantage?

Agree about the terrible tooling. 'Twas always thus, unfortunately, even when
I was doing PLDs back in 1991.

~~~
PaulHoule
Well the economics get awful for designing chips as the feature size gets
smaller, which is keeping 28mm fabs pretty busy and will just get worse at 10
or 8 nm or whatever comes next.

------
dmytroi
Ehm, FPGA/CPLD are everywhere, it's hard to say, but my educated guess is that
hardware market consumes similar amount of SoC-like and FPGA/CPLD chips, look,
even Pebble smartwatch uses Lattice iCE40 FPGA, MacBooks also usually have few
FPGA's here and there. FPGA/CPLD's are essential to implement "glue-logic",
which does what it says - glue different pieces of hardware together. Of
course you can do "glue" in software, but than your customers will enjoy poor
battery life time and random glitches here and there. And nobody gonna spend
big-money (it's actually depends, sometimes it 1kk+$, sometimes you can get
away by 30-50k$) by running their own ASIC's when you can just buy jellybean
FPGA's.

Indeed phone/desktop market might move to more one-chip-for-everything
solution, but even then we need glue-ish logic to control something like
screen backlight DC-DC converters, charging IC's, etc, which is much more
easier done from FPGA/CPLD-like devices. On the other hand FPGA/CPLD's are
essential in some classes of devices, for example test instruments: modern
oscilloscopes usually have 3+ FPGA's in them, companies like Keysight usually
only run custom ASIC's when they hit limitation of current silicon tech, like
their N2802A 25GHz active probe (starting from 23500$) uses amplifier IC made
with indium phosphide process (InP), which is kinda far away from whatever
current consumer product companies are doing, you can check the teardown of
this beast here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnFZR7UsIPE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnFZR7UsIPE)

So in my opinion FPGA/CPLD market will live long and strong, players might
change, but demand is enormous. The only problem in my opinion is that whole
market is more B2B-like (FPGA's are usually just a humble IC's inside end
customers products, you don't see stickers "Altera inside" or anything on
products themselves), so it's kinda hard to get grasp what's going on.

------
kevin_thibedeau
XESS is biased toward the segment of the market they play in which is centered
around computational applications where having a micro on board is usually
desirable. There are _many_ more places where simple glue logic is needed and
a small, cheap FPGA/CPLD fits the bill. One would hope that Altera's (and
possibly Xilinx's) new masters won't fuck this up and shutter their low end
devices but that doesn't mean there won't be demand for them into the future.
People with a need for these types of FPGAs aren't XESS customers so they are
blinded by the limited scope of their own business.

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kqr2
In case the link is down:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.xess.com/blog/extinction-
level-event/)

Also, I believe that cheap microcontrollers have been able to replace FPGAs in
some cases.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Cheap microcontrollers can replace old CPLDs, which now are technically FPGAs
but really don't have much of a place in modern hardware.

They can also replace FPGAs because even small microcontrollers are now really
systems-on-a-chip, with integrated SPI, CAN, LVDS, or even USB/transceivers.
To me, that's more like replacing an FPGA with dedicated hardware - it's just
that microcontroller peripheral options are so thorough that dedicated
hardware no longer needs to be custom.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
It's mixed. You can spin a fast loop in a PIC @ 1,2, 4 or 8 MSPS, and that
eats into FPGA territory.

USB is uniformly terrible; multi-PHY CAN offerings are disappearing. SPI can
be good if you have the right interface chip ( which you may or may not
actually know until you're running against a prototype ).

LVDS looks interesting, but it seems to have been a lot supplanted by SPI/I2C
and Ethernet.

I dunno; it's just different. Phones have warped the market in puzzling ways.

~~~
justaaron
spot-on re USB = terrible (for typical embedded usage- derived clock, latency,
fancy software/hardware stack support requirements. hardly a simple interface.
not worthy of universality) and of course, it's because of the phone SOC
market...

basically the entire high-end of embedded has been taken-over by poorly-built
linux distros running on phone SOC reference board designs...

as much as i'd love to support the 96boards effort, they are pushing us all
into using USB for things like audio codecs... (i'll take TDM'ed I2S anytime,
as at least there is a real bitclock as well as a frameclock, directly wiggled
chipside...)

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I use an inexpensive USB audio interface daily, and _that_ part isn't bad at
all. I'm able lto run two DAW against it; one for cue mix with VST plugins and
another for recording.

If you're careful with part selection and systems engineering on the host
side, it works extremely well.

I'm also loath to throw too many rocks at the SOC boards - they make fine
prototypes that can then be adapted to something more appropriate.

------
JoachimS
The article is based on the premise that Altera will stop developing FPGAs for
general availibility. Nothing I've seen (and would love to be shown otherwise)
so far indicates this.

FPGAs has been used as test designs when qualifying fabs for volume production
since they are regular, but more complex and closer match to general ASICs
than memories.

FPGAs are also often used more and more either with internal CPU cores (hard
or soft) or as a companion to CPUs providing acceleration, esp data plane
processing.

This means that the aquisition of Altera is mor of adding a business that
complements the CPU business, not remove a competitor from another market
segment. Intel can sell CPU+FPGA solutions for data center, big data. But it
can also sell more chips and increase utilization in their fabs.

And for FPGA users the FPGAs coming out of these fabs will probably be better
with higher density, lower power consumption that what Altera managed to
design themselves. And getting a Stratix or a Cyclone SoC with an Atom core
inside running Linux would be a very neat solution.

------
petra
Or there's another alternative. The main reason it was hard to make money from
the industrial etc segment - was low volume combines with a lot of support
costs.

But what if

a. xilinx built c-like tools that enabled embedded software engineers develop
easily ?

b. they released those freely to some segment of the market ?

c. they've built an external support and IP ecosystem, either open or closed
or both ?

Those actions can increase margins for xilinx, and they seem to be doing a,b.

As for the hardware, maybe the article is right. Also ,recent industrial chips
are using 28nm, and going beyond that is extremely expensive and might not fit
the industrial scenario anyhow, maybe there's not a lot of innovation left in
the industrial FPGA market,

~~~
chriscool
> Also ,recent industrial chips are using 28nm, and going beyond that is
> extremely expensive

Yeah, so ASICs that are not produced in big enough volume will not move to
14nm or less. This means that FPGA that can move to 14nm or less, because of
bigger volume, may become competitive against those ASICs.

~~~
petra
When i'm saying "industrial chips are at 28nm" i mean industrial FPGA's.

Will xilinx create industrial FPGA's at 14nm or beyond ?

First transistor cost will have to become meaningfully lower than 28nm
transistor costs. That only happens at 10nm. But at that node, NRE costs are
extremely expensive. Spread over low-cost low-end industrial chips - this
requires a huge volume, which xilinx probably doesn't have yet.

Also couple that with 28nm being more much reliable(all the failure mechanisms
increase at 10nm: electron migration from wires, thermal hot sports,
transistor fin self heating), and since reliability is key for industrial - it
would be hard to see industrial moving beyond 28nm.

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payne92
I think it gets squeezed even more with general purpose GPU computing.

~~~
exelius
There's no reason you can't have general-purpose SoCs that combine traditional
pipeline-driven CPU cores, GPGPU cores and FPGA cores with memory, bus chips,
storage, etc. We long ago reached the point of diminishing returns for
cramming more raw computing power on a chip; so chips of the future will
likely consolidate specialized features for various workloads in the name of
power savings / speed increases for certain workloads.

~~~
rjsw
Plus Intel owns the IP to all the pieces and is happy to provide documentation
for them.

Xilinx have Mali GPUs on their latest ARM+FPGA hybrids but that isn't much use
to me if I can't find out how to program it.

