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SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 2001-- Altera Corporation (Nasdaq:ALTR), a leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs), today announced a major breakthrough by achieving 10 Gbps (OC-192) throughput on its industry leading APEX(TM) 20KE device family. Altera is the first programmable logic device company to achieve this significant milestone, by using Altera's industry leading signal processing intellectual property (IP) cores in a single APEX 20K1500E device.

As the demand for high-bandwidth telecommunications channels increases, service providers and equipment manufacturers must deliver more bandwidth for less cost. Altera's breakthrough enables service providers to reach more customers without the need to install costly repeaters required to boost signal integrity across long distances over fiber optic cables.

``Programmable logic combined with our industry leading forward error correction (FEC) IP cores will enable our customers to rapidly deploy next-generation networks at significantly lower cost, upgrade their systems remotely to meet future specification changes or updates, and capture more revenue without increasing their spending,'' said Justin Cowling, Altera senior IP marketing manager.

Design Details

International Telecommunication Union (ITU) G.709 specification details data rates at 2.7 Gbps, 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps. ITU G.709 defines the network node interface and describes a ``wrapper'' approach that incorporates a simple framing structure and a forward error correction (FEC) section. FEC technology detects and corrects errors that corrupt data packets as they travel long distances, thus increasing the distance that an optical signal can travel. By incorporating the FEC technology, service providers will need fewer repeaters in their networks, thus reducing their overall system cost. The FEC technology is readily implemented using the advanced, Reed-Solomon error correction IP core from Altera. A white paper outlining more details about this break through can be downloaded from Altera's IP Megastore web site (http://www.altera.com/IPmegastore).

Other Telecom Functions

In addition to signal processing intellectual property, Altera has successfully tested several other critical telecom functions that run well over 10 Gbps on its current APEX 20KE PLD family. These telecom functions are key building blocks for next generation of equipment that use emerging bus interfaces such as POS-PHY Level 3, POS-PHY Level 4, LCS, CSIX, RapidIO, HyperTransport, and PCI-X.

About Altera

Altera Corporation, The Programmable Solutions Company®, was founded in 1983 and is a leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs). Altera's CMOS-based PLDs are user-programmable semiconductor chips that enhance flexibility and reduce time-to-market for companies in the communications, computer peripheral, and industrial markets. By using high performance devices, software development tools, and sophisticated intellectual property cores, system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions can be created with embedded processors, memory, and other complex logic together on a single PLD. Altera common stock is traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol ALTR. More information on Altera is available on the Internet at http://www.altera.com.

Altera, The Programmable Solutions Company, APEX, and MegaWizard are trademarks and/or service marks of Altera Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

     Altera Corporation
     Ami Dorrell, 408/544-6879
     adorrell@altera.com