I think the FPGA market has bifurcated into (at least) two quite distinct markets:
- the small, low cost, low power segment, where people want a programmable chip of the scale of a small CPU like a Z80 or an m68k, maybe in a small package like a BGA256. Quite a lot of crossover with CPLDs.
- the server/etc market where the chips are as complex, expensive and power hungry as a modern Xeon
Since being bought by Intel, Altera seemingly have pushed strongly towards the latter - not terribly surprising given it's Intel.
For the former, I think we increasingly have to look away from Altera and Xilinx and towards the smaller players like Lattice and Microsemi, and maybe some of the Chinese firms.
Theo