Altera
semiconductor company
Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California, with a primary focus on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology and system-on-a-chip (SoC) FPGAs. Founded in 1983, it was acquired by Intel in 2015, re-established under the Altera name in 2024, and in 2025 became a privately held company majority-owned by private equity firm Silver Lake.
Early history
The company was founded in 1983 by semiconductor veterans Robert Hartmann, Paul Newhagen, James Sansbury, and Michael Magranet with $1,300,000 in seed money. The name of the company was a play on "alterable", the type of chips the company created. The founders selected Rodney Smith to be the company's first CEO. In 1988, Altera became a public company via an initial public offering (IPO).
Products
FPGAs
The main product lines from Altera are the Agilex FPGA product lines, and their predecessors: the high-end Stratix series, mid-range Arria series, and lower-cost Cyclone series; as well as the MAX series non-volatile FPGAs.
Semiconductor intellectual property cores
Altera and its partners offer an array of semiconductor intellectual property cores that serve as building blocks that design engineers can drop into their system designs to perform specific functions. IP cores eliminate some of the time-consuming tasks of creating every block in a design from scratch. In 2000, Altera acquired Designpro and Northwest Logic, providers of IP cores, in order to expand its design capabilities and move towards delivery of complete system-on-chip solutions.
System on a chip FPGAs
Beginning in December 2012, the company announced the shipment of its first system on a chip FPGA devices using a fully depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI) 28 nm chip manufacturing process.
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