North American Company Profiles - Smithsonian - The Chip Collection

Altera North American Company Profiles
Coinciding with the company’s migration from 0.8μm to 0.6μm in 1993, Altera moved from two to three layers of
metal. Today, the FLEX10KA Family is based on a 0.35μm triple-layer metal process, and is expected to add a
fourth layer of metal in 1997. The Michelangelo PLDs will be implemented in a 0.35μm EEPROM-based CMOS
process with four-layers of metal. For future products with gate densities reaching 250,000 usable gates and
above, Altera is developing a 0.25μm, five-layer metal process.
Altera supplies proprietary software development systems (MAX+PLUS II) to support its PLD products.
Semiconductor Fabrication Facilities
Altera has foundry agreements with Sharp, TSMC, Cypress, and Intel. It owns 17 percent of Cypress
Semiconductor's wafer fab in Round Rock, Texas. Through this ownership, Altera has the right to buy a
percentage of the wafers produced by Cypress approximately equal to the percentage of its ownership.
In November 1995, Altera signed a letter of intent for joint ownership of a TSMC joint venture fab facility, located in
Camas, Washington. Under the terms, Altera will invest $140 million to take an 18 percent equity stake in, and also
gain the rights to 27 percent of the output from the new fab. Construction on the facility, called WaferTech, began
in July 1996. Potential output from the plant is expected to be 7,500 200mm wafers per week, with production
scheduled to start in 1998. Design rules will start at 0.35μm and migrate to 0.25μm.
Key Agreements
• In February 1996, Altera purchased a minority stake in I-Cube Inc., a privately held supplier of programmable
switching and interconnect devices (PSIDs).
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INTEGRATED CIRCUIT ENGINEERING CORPORATION