News Intel sells 51% of Altera FPGA business to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion

[Admin]

Intel is selling a 51% stake in Altera to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion as part of a strategy to streamline operations and focus on core products.

Intel sells 51% of Altera FPGA business to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion : Read more

 

[bit_user]

It's a good thing Intel never released a CPU by the codename Silver Lake, or else this could get really confusing!

 

[NinoPino]

Different CEO, same strategy. A confirmation that Pat took the right direction.

 

[Giroro]

Strip Intel down and sell it for scrap.
That's what the board wanted; and that's what they're getting.

 

[thestryker]

Different CEO, same strategy. A confirmation that Pat took the right direction.

I'm not sure Gelsinger was looking to cede control of Altera, but I'm sure he'd have been at least looking for a deal like they made with Apollo on Fab 34 (51/49 Intel majority).

I'm guessing Mobileye is up next.

 

[bit_user]

Strip Intel down and sell it for scrap.
That's what the board wanted; and that's what they're getting.

Dude, Gelsinger already announced a spin-out of Altera, a few years ago! That spin-off was actually completed 13 months ago, but it remained Intel-owned.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...standalone-fpga-company-under-intel-ownership
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I think they were probably eyeing an IPO, but ended up doing this sale of a majority stake, instead.

 

[Mindstab Thrull]

So... Who exactly is "Silver Lake"? This may be the first time I've ever heard the company at all. For all I know it's a retirement community for well-off seniors.

 

[thestryker]

So... Who exactly is "Silver Lake"? This may be the first time I've ever heard the company at all. For all I know it's a retirement community for well-off seniors.

Private equity firm whose early investing included Broadcom/Avago. It's usually a fair bet when it's a company with a random name nobody in the tech space is aware of that it will be private equity.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

So... Who exactly is "Silver Lake"? This may be the first time I've ever heard the company at all. For all I know it's a retirement community for well-off seniors.

Intel’s shelved dreams of a competitive CPU personified as an angel investor.

 

[bit_user]

So... Who exactly is "Silver Lake"? This may be the first time I've ever heard the company at all. For all I know it's a retirement community for well-off seniors.

I know @thestryker already answered, but I just want to point out that you can always click the link to the press release and look at the bottom. Every press release I think I've ever seen has a paragraph about each company involved in the announcement.

 

[watzupken]

Intel is throwing all the dead weights to keep afloat. Not sure if it will tide them through because you will ultimately have nothing to sell, while the foundry is still burning through their cash. All eyes are on 18A, but I remain skeptical that they can improve yields significantly. So by the time 18A based Intel chips are out in the market I believe in 2026, it will be a make or break situation for Intel.

 

[TerryLaze]

Intel is throwing all the dead weights to keep afloat. Not sure if it will tide them through because you will ultimately have nothing to sell, while the foundry is still burning through their cash. All eyes are on 18A, but I remain skeptical that they can improve yields significantly. So by the time 18A based Intel chips are out in the market I believe in 2026, it will be a make or break situation for Intel.

AMD threw away half of the company to get FPGA so I doubt FPGA is dead weight.
Also keeping 49% is not throwing anything away, they still have a lot of say on what will happen with altera.
Optane got thrown away basically because they sold all of it.
18A entered risk production which means that the big money spending has finished, much of the rest of the foundries are on hold or being build much slower.
Nothing is make or brake anymore, unless their foundries explode they will make CPUs and they will sell and make money.
The getting external clients is still a make or break situation but that was always the case since before they even started.
Getting external customers will determine if they will just do ok or if they will make big bugs.

Yields are good enough even with old data (really early yields) if they make chiplet designs like all their latest stuff already is.
Especially for mobile/laptop and the like which is intels biggest money maker they will have really good yields and make a lot of money.
https://www.techpowerup.com/329613/intel-18a-yields-are-actually-okay-and-the-math-checks-out

A while back, we covered a leak of "Panther Lake," Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 300 series CPUs. The leaked package thankfully included information about die sizes, which we can input into the calculator to find out the yield, assuming Intel is manufacturing Panther Lake compute tiles on the 18A node, using the aforementioned d0 of 0.4. The die number four with a CPU and NPU on it, measuring 8.004x14.288 mm, a 114.304 mm² silicon die, gives a yield of 64.4% on the default Murphy's model. Moore's model is the most pessimistic, with only about 50% of usable dies. The die number five of Panther Lake, housing the Xe3 GPU, is even smaller and measures only 53.6 mm², yielding an impressive 81% of usable dies. Even with the most pessimistic assumptions, the yield curve drops to 60%.

 

[bit_user]

AMD threw away half of the company to get FPGA so I doubt FPGA is dead weight.

Their stock was overvalued. When that happens, a sensible thing to do with it is to go out and try to find something to buy that has a stable income stream. That's a way to grow your company faster than the market. Plus, they got the Xilinx Versal AI accelerators, which they're now using in their APUs. So, seems like it was a smart move, IMO.

Getting external customers will determine if they will just do ok or if they will make big bugs.

They can't afford to make any more big bugs!
: D

Semiconductor fabrication is a pipeline, though. The biggest casualty of their current financial problems (and the threat of CHIPS getting killed) is not 18A or even 14A, but the stuff which comes after. If they can't afford to make the needed investments in those future nodes right now, they'll end up falling behind, again.

 

[TerryLaze]

Their stock was overvalued. When that happens, a sensible thing to do with it is to go out and try to find something to buy that has a stable income stream. That's a way to grow your company faster than the market. Plus, they got the Xilinx Versal AI accelerators, which they're now using in their APUs. So, seems like it was a smart move, IMO.

That's why initially it was "only" around 35bil, it got to 50bil because of the overevaluation, neither number changes the fact that it was a very big chunk of the market cap of AMD, they gave away a huge part of the company to get that FPGA.
Also the point was that FPGA isn't a dead weight, so thanks for the support.

Semiconductor fabrication is a pipeline, though. The biggest casualty of their current financial problems (and the threat of CHIPS getting killed) is not 18A or even 14A, but the stuff which comes after. If they can't afford to make the needed investments in those future nodes right now, they'll end up falling behind, again.

Intel has proven that they can milk the same process for years on end, everybody is in on the meme.
They might fail as a fab business but they will not fail as a business.