Intel Buying Altera For $16.7 BillionIntel Buying Altera For $16.7 Billion

It looks like Intel's "on again, off again" purchase of Altera is finally going through. The current buzz on the street is that Intel has said that it's agreed to buy Altera for $16.7 billion.

The deal, which first came to light on June 1, makes sense for several reasons. From Intel's perspective, the personal computer market that consumes a lot of its processor chips is in decline, with more and more end-users moving to tablets or even smartphones for their Internet access and computing needs.

Other big markets for Intel's processors are servers and communications. The problem is that processors are really good at performing decision-making operations and implementing control functions but are inefficient when it comes to many algorithmic data processing tasks.

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