Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[marketmaven]

XLNX, ALTR Bearish-Open Source FPGA May Come

Red Herring Next Issue

Opening up the programmable chip market
The world’s largest chip makers, including Intel, IBM and Lucent, have been flummoxed for some time by a customizable semiconductor called a field programmable gateway array (FPGA). They use this critical technology in their products; they just haven’t been able to duplicate it. Cheaper programmable chips could revolutionize many products—from PDAs to network routers. And the exploding FPGA market is estimated at $3.5 billion. The hitch is that two companies, Xylinx and Altera, own 80 percent of the market for these chips. But an open-source model, borrowing from Linux, could be the way around this monopoly.

• The issue of Red Herring that hits the newsstands Monday reports on a secret strategy meeting in India where VCs, academics, and chip makers worked on a plan to share their knowledge of programmable chips and produce cheaper consumer products that don’t become obsolete. The implications could be huge.
• The issue also digs into the challenge of a new generation of virulent computer viruses and worms and what startups and large companies alike are doing to stop them.