Founded in 1983,
Altera Corporation is a leading supplier
of programmable semiconductors and related
products that enable electronic systems companies
to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate and
differentiate in their markets. Altera is headquartered
in San Jose, California, and employs approximately 2,700
people in 19 countries. Altera completed its initial public
offering in 1988, and trades on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol ALTR.
Altera designs, manufactures, and markets a variety of products:
Programmable logic devices (PLDs), which consist of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), are standard semiconductor integrated circuits, or chips, that our customers program to perform desired logic functions in their electronic systems.
HardCopy application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) transition customer designs from high-density FPGAs to low-cost non-programmable implementations for volume production. Because they are customized only on the last few mask layers, HardCopy ASICs deliver performance that can be an alternative to traditional ASICs, but with reduced development costs and shorter production lead times.
Pre-defined design building blocks, known as intellectual property (IP) cores, can be licensed by customers to add standard functions to their PLD designs.
Proprietary development software licensed and used by customers to develop, compile, and verify their designs, and then program their designs into our PLDs. The software operates on personal computers and engineering workstations.
Altera was one of the first suppliers of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) PLDs and had annual revenues in 2008 of US$1.37 billion. Altera offers devices in combination with software tools, intellectual property, and customer support to provide high-value programmable solutions to over 13,000 customers worldwide.