Altera buys power management chip specialist
The deal will provide Altera with separate product line alongside its existing FPGAs (see left).
“Power is increasingly a strategic choice for product differentiation in communications, computing and enterprise, and industrial applications,” said John Daane, president, CEO and chairman of Altera. “By adding a power group to Altera, we will bring even more value to system-level designs. Altera’s FPGA roadmap will be enhanced significantly with the addition of Enpirion’s power technologies.” Altera is taking a $6m charge related to the acquisition.
Ashraf Lotfi, founder and CEO of Enpirion, will serve as an Altera Fellow and chief technologist for Altera’s newly formed Power business unit. “Joining Altera will enhance the Enpirion team’s ability to solve tough power challenges,” said Lotfi. “Our leadership in high-efficiency power conversion solutions complements Altera’s leadership in FPGAs. Enpirion employees have built an innovative company, and we look forward to building upon this foundation with Altera.”
Enpirion is a spin off from Bell Labs in 2001 and its key power technologies of high-frequency switching, magnetics and packaging are engineered into complete power system-on-chip products that have been shipping in volume since 2005.
In February the company won the 2013 award for outstanding technical innovations in embedded technologies at Embedded World for a new magnetic alloy which enables the miniaturization of passive magnetic components and their assimilation with integrated circuits at wafer level.
Wafer level magnetics (WLM) take magnetic components from their 3-dimensional discrete shape to a planar 2-dimensional thin-film form that can be deposited with standard wafer processes on top of CMOS wafers. Enpirion’s WLM technology is fully qualified for full-scale mass production and enables the industry’s first ever Power System-on-Chip (PowerSoC) based on electroplated wafer level magnetics, the EL711.
The portfolio of DC-DC converter PowerSoCs with integrated inductors enable the industry’s smallest solution footprints and are recognized for their high efficiency, low noise, exceptional thermal performance, high reliability and ease-of-use.
www.altera.com
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