Altera Corp. designs, manufactures, and markets programmable logic devices (plds); structured application-specific integrated circuit devices; predefined design building blocks or intellectual-property cores; and associated development tools. Its programmable logic devices are semiconductor integrated circuits. Altera also provides HardCopy, HardCopy II, and other masked programmed logic devices, configuration devices, development software, and other tools and intellectual-property cores. Altera was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in San Jose, Calif.