Verilog vs VHDL

Jim,

Any snapshot of just the last year, at the calendar year mark, can be safely ignored if you try to get too much from it.

If you take the last five years, then maybe you get to see the average trend (which is evident when you look at the overall market share -- hard to get to 50+% without actually showing some pretty impressive growth...). That Altera is (still) ~33% is also not lost on anyone. The whole market has more $$$, so we all show growth in $$$, even if some of us are not really gaining market share.

A quick review of "How to Lie with Numbers" would prove instructive to anyone who wanted to spin the data to their advantage. That said, I have my own bias, and the way I chose to post the numbers could be considered highly biased (not intentionally, really).

So, the whole reason for the post was to show that 2004 vs 2005 was a generally good year for PLD suppliers compared with digital ASIC suppliers.

It was also to show that PLDs are about 1/5th the total logic market, so VHDL and verilog are pretty useful to know.

Austin

Reply to
Austin Lesea
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I was wondering why the Altera results differed in two areas, but Xilinx's did not. Did the report not clarify that, or was it a typo ?

Yes, and an even better year for Foundries, who some could consider the ultimate 'ASIC suppliers' :)

Did those numbers include OnSemi/Philips/TI etc standard logic devices ?

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Jim,

Answers, below,

Austin

-snip-

Not sure what you are referring to. One thing is that Hardcopy is including in those Altera numbers, and we don't see Hardcopy as anything but an ASIC, so it makes it hard to compare how the programmable logic sector is doing (is Altera falling more rapidly behind in FPGAs?).

Foundries are doing well, right now. Tough business. Low margins. Cycles up and down. Huge capital costs. Glad I am not in it.

No, they did not. All standard logic products were not included in any of the numbers. Neither were memories, microprocessors, nor DSP.

Standard logic in 2005 was $1,579 million total. DSP was $7,569 million total. uP+Memories was $104 billion!

As I said, you can make the numbers tell any story you want.

For example, comparing 2005 with 2002: (using company reports)

2002: Altera, $712 million revenue for the year (No Hardcopy back then) Xilinx, $1,016 million revenue 2005: Altera, $1,124 million (4% or $45 million is Hardcopy, really $1,079 million, as noted in their public filing) Xilinx, $1,573 million

So we grew 1573/1016= 55% and Altera grew 1079/712= 52%.

Could have fun all day with numbers, but I need to get some work done now.

Reply to
Austin Lesea

#Looking at PLDs alone (no surprises here): #Xilinx up 3.7% with 50.3% #Altera up 7.6% with 33.1% #Which makes these 5 with 96.8% of a $3.17 billion market #So, what happens when you combine the Logic ASIC with the PLD markets, #and look at them together? #Xilinx up 3.7% with 10.5% #Altera up 10.6% with 7.2% #A combined 45.7% of the total market, which accounts for $7.13 billion.

In both blocks, Xilinx is +3.7%, but in one Altera is +7.6%, and the other +10.6%, so that was what caught my eye.

The 'second Altera' seems to be slightly larger, which may be tbe $45M hardcopy you mentioned, included in that block, but not in the first ?

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Jim,

Could be (where is Hardcopy included/not?). I used company reports for the second posting, and an independent market firm's results for the first posting.

I am pretty sure the marketing firm has all of Altera's revenues under PLD (including Hardcopy). The yearly report clearly states Hardcopy as

4% in 2005.

It is pretty picky of us to not include it (exclude from all comparisons), but we do so to call attention to the volume of business that they do, that detracts from their mindshare in FPGAs. It is as if they also make buggy whips. Who cares how much money they make on buggy whips. They state in their yearly report, that Hardcopy could/might become 10% or more of their business. Given that LSI bailed, and had $145 million, that might be too low an estimate. If Altera gained all LSI business, that would be almost $200 million for structured ASICs in their basket.

No small number, but from our experience with Hardwire 1,2, 3 etc. that business is a huge distraction, with poor to non-existent margins.

It does offer customers a path for cost reduction, and its primary value is in the fact that most customers can't stop changing things, so they must stick with FPGAs far longer than they wanted to. Or, they can't make the Hardcopy work, so they have to use the FPGA for much longer than they wanted to. Timing closure is still the number one problem with any "hardened" approach.

However, when the hardened version doesn't work, the customer usually demands a price concession on the FPGA until it does work. Such 'difficult conversations' are conducted on an adversarial basis with customers and generate negative "goodwill" and are never good for a company. I'd rather not be in a business where I have to get tough with a customer to stay in business! Once burned, they tend to go away, forever.

I'd rather not deal with a manufacturer that has tough guys used to very angry yelling and screaming customers that I must negotiate with...

I am surprised that no one pointed out how good 2001 was and how bad

2002 was. The dot-com bust really burst many bubbles. Again, for really good comparisons, you might want to go all the way back to 1985.

Austin

Reply to
Austin Lesea

I am in no way surprised that this thread turned into a FPGA vs ASIC and then a Xilinx vs. Altera (or Xilinx vs. the world) war. What I don't understand is how come Jim hasn't recommenced any Lattice devices yet ;)

Jokes aside, please stop the madness

Reply to
burn.sir

Hmm - I don't see much of a war here ? - have I missed something ?

Austin put some numbers out, and I queried some details of that, but I had no real issue with the numbers themselves.

It all seemed quite civil to me ? None of Austin's replies offended me, and I don't think I offended him ?

and how would that be relevent, to this thread, or why should I ?

madness ? - I'm sure I missed something ...

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

burn,

OK, I will no longer post to his topic, since you object.

Aust> I am in no way surprised that this thread turned into a FPGA vs ASIC

Reply to
Austin Lesea

The most offensive posting here was by burn... , dressing down Ron as if he were a dumb schoolboy. Otherwise it was the usual banter... Peter Alfke

Reply to
Peter Alfke

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