Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

As noted by others, server manufacturers have expressed a strong desire for a FPGA where they can customize the hardware for their requirements. Putting the server chip and the FPGA on one same chip obviously improves the speed and lowers the power as well. Apart from the improving the high end server products, I even see a big advantage in lower end products. The customers can include custom peripheral circuitry on the processor chip. If that was done a few years ago, the contra revenue problem not have been as severe for tablet chips. The Intel designs did not meet the exact customer requirements, and so we ended up with the contra revenue. Intel design cycle appears to be too long, and so a on chip FPGA will definitely help for thin and light type products. In addition the tooling cost these days for a new custom design is also very high. So FPGA would be a fast cost effective means of customization for special features.

Sorry, but isn't that a bit naive? FPGA circuits require much larger area, power and are of lower speed than comparable logic processes. You may be able to add smaller peripheral extensions (not even instruction set, since that is too high speed), but not for architectural changes on CPU and GPU. In addition, why should Intel have had a problem with redesigns? They have all the tooling in their house so that's a non issue. If it were that easy, they could just have redesigned the silicon to match the customer's requirements. It is not that easy.