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