Collaboration with OpenPOWER Members Enables FPGA-based Compute Solutions Based on the IBM POWER Architecture

San Jose, Calif., March 24, 2014– Altera Corporation (Nasdaq: ALTR) today announced it joined the IBM OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development alliance based on IBM's POWER microprocessor architecture. Altera will collaborate with IBM and other OpenPOWER Foundation members to develop high-performance compute solutions that integrate IBM POWER CPUs with Altera’s FPGA-based acceleration technologies for use in next-generation data centers.

FPGAs provide POWER users configurable hardware accelerators in the core compute complex that help system architects reduce operating expenses by achieving very high performance at lower power. IBM and Altera have already worked together to create a coherent interface between the POWER8 processor and Altera’s Stratix® V FPGAs. This collaboration provides developers a roadmap to use the high-performance capabilities of Altera’s Arria® 10 and Stratix 10 FPGAs and SoCs in next-generation POWER-bases systems. Leveraging the Altera SDK for OpenCL, developers are able to integrate IBM Power CPUs with Altera FPGAs as a high-performance compute solution.

“The OpenPOWER Foundation will greatly increase the rate of innovation by giving developers an expanded and open set of technologies that will power the next generation of big data and cloud computing applications,” said Jeff Waters, senior vice president of Altera’s military, industrial and computing division. “Collaborating with IBM and other OpenPOWER Foundation members enables us to proliferate the use of FPGAs in a wide range of high-performance computing applications.”

The OpenPOWER Foundation includes a group of industry-leading companies working together to develop high-performance compute solutions based on the IBM POWER architecture. OpenPOWER Foundation members include Altera, IBM, Google, Mellanox, NVIDIA, Samsung Electronics, Suzhou PowerCore Technology and Tyan. Together, the companies are building advanced server, networking, storage and hardware-acceleration technologies aimed at delivering more choices, control and flexibility to developers of next-generation hyperscale and cloud data centers.  For information on the OpenPOWER Foundation visit www.ibm.com.

“We are excited Altera will be collaborating with us on the IBM POWER architecture by providing OpenCL and its powerful FPGAs to the OpenPOWER development community,” said Bradley McCredie, IBM Fellow.  “This foundation will benefit greatly from Altera’s FPGAs enabling a wide set of customized server, networking and storage hardware for future data centers and cloud computing.”