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Altera urges customers to shift software
By Anthony Cataldo , EE Times
April 05, 2004 (1:37 PM EDT)
URL: http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=18700193
San Jose, Calif. - Altera Corp. says coming out with its first Windows-based PLD design software more than 10 years ago was one of the smartest moves it could have made. Now, the company is trying to find a way to wean its customers from the tools that helped put it on the map.
Those tools, called Max plus 2, have been around since 1991, when the biggest PLD the company was making had 256 macrocells. Since then, logic density has increased by several orders of magnitude and programmable logic architectures have gotten much more complex. As a consequence, the limitations of the software began to show, and by the late 1990s the company decided it was time to build a new software platform from scratch.
That tool, called Quartus, was introduced in 1999, but the company soon realized it ran too slowly to compete. That software was replaced in early 2001 by Quartus 2, which now serves as the company's flagship development platform. Soon after, Altera stopped making enhancements to Max plus 2.
Though the company says that adoption for Quartus 2 is strong, getting Max plus 2 users to make the shift won't happen overnight. One problem is that Altera has granted more than 350,000 Max plus 2 licenses.
So, the company encourages customers to move to Quartus 2. Besides supporting the newer devices, Quartus 2 now supports nearly all the older CPLD devices. As further incentive, performance has shown a 15 to 200 percent boost over the older tools for some of the Max CPLDs, the company said. And for those designers comfortable with the feel of the Max tools, Quartus 2 users may run the same graphical user interface.
Still, Altera says it has no plans to discard the Max tools and will continue to field Max plus 2-related questions from customers. "We're not going to take away your favorite teddy bear if you like it that much," said Chris Balough, director of software and tools marketing at Altera.
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