With the top two FPGA companies taking up 89% of the FPGA market, you can be forgiven for thinking there was no one else out there. Xilinx and Altera have done a good job of defending the duopoly but a few companies are gradually winning market share by targeting specific applications and sub-markets. Here is a list of the top 5 FPGA companies.
Xilinx
Website: www.xilinx.com
Stock: NASDAQ:XLNX
Market share: 49%
The leader in FPGAs for many years, Xilinx has a good range of FPGAs in terms of cost and performance.
Altera
Website: www.altera.com
Stock: NASDAQ:ALTR
Market share: 40%
The Altera FPGAs cover the low, mid and upper end markets with the Cyclone, Arria and Stratix series respectively.
Lattice Semiconductor
Website: www.latticesemi.com
Stock: NASDAQ:LSCC
Market share: 6%
Lattice Semiconductor tackles the low-power and low-cost market for FPGAs. They market their products as the “high-value FPGAs” of the industry, providing best performance per cost. With the explosion in portable electronics, this has been a good strategy for Lattice.
Microsemi
Website: www.microsemi.com
Stock: NASDAQ:MSCC
Market share: 4%
Microsemi specializes in low-power and mixed-signal FPGAs. Here are some of Microsemi’s claims: 1)The industry’s lowest power FPGA: the IGLOO. 2)The industry’s only FPGA with hard 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller: the SmartFusion.
QuickLogic
Website: www.quicklogic.com
Stock: NASDAQ:QUIK
Market share: 1%
QuickLogic’s focus is on the mobile devices industry meaning ultra-low power, small form factor packaging, and high design security. Rather than selling “FPGA”, they pitch “customizable semiconductors”.
I’m interested to hear from FPGA developers who have worked on Lattice, Microsemi and QuickLogic FPGAs. Share your experience with us in the comments below. What are their tools like? How do they compare in performance and price to Xilinx and Altera?
Reply 2017-02-18 09:03:08
Statement: This post is only the personal view of the author and does not represent the opinions of ALLPCB.com.
