Top EDA Companies Pledge Support for Altera's New Low-Cost Cyclone FPGAs

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The industry's top EDA vendors Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT), Synopsys, Inc., (Nasdaq: SNPS) and Synplicity, Inc., (Nasdaq: SYNP) today pledged support for Altera Corporation's (Nasdaq: ALTR) recently announced Cyclone(TM) device family, the industry's lowest-cost FPGA device family. Over the last six months, Altera has worked closely with its EDA partners to develop a complete design and verification flow for the new Cyclone device family.

"Providing a design flow that is easy-to-use and familiar to our customers is critical with the introduction of new devices," said Tim Southgate, Altera's vice president of software and tools marketing. "With this level of support from our leading EDA partners, Cyclone device designers now have access to a complete, easy-to-use design and verification environment tailored to maximize the benefits of the Cyclone device family."

Featuring a timing closure methodology based on ASIC design techniques, Altera's Quartus® II design software enables Cyclone device designers to significantly accelerate the process of meeting timing requirements in their system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) designs.

Support from Leading EDA Partners

"Through close collaboration with Altera, we ensure that our LeonardoSpectrum(TM) and Precision(TM) synthesis solutions provide highly optimized mapping technology designed to take full advantage of the Cyclone device family features," said Anne Sanquini, vice president and general manager for the Mentor Graphics® HDL Design Division. "As the leader in programmable logic design solutions, we ensure our design capture, simulation, synthesis, board-level, and complete design flow tools are specifically tailored to increase design productivity, resulting in cost-to-market savings for our mutual customers." (http://www.mentor.com )

"By leveraging our experience with ASIC design flows, we are able to offer a similar design flow for FPGAs such as Altera's ASIC targeted Cyclone device family," said Michael Jackson, vice president and general manager of FPGA Synthesis at Synopsys. "Our FPGA Compiler II(TM) featuring Block Level Incremental Synthesis (BLIS) reduces the number of design iterations, resulting in shorter design cycles and faster-time-to-market for Cyclone designers." (http://www.synopsys.com )

"We leveraged our extensive expertise in mapping to memory structures when developing a design flow for Altera's Cyclone device family," said Andy Haines, vice president of marketing at Synplicity. "We believe our Synplify® and Synplify Pro® synthesis solutions enable Cyclone device designers to achieve maximum design performance with minimum resource utilization in the fastest possible time." (http://www.synplicity.com )

About the Cyclone Device Family

Cyclone devices are the industry's lowest-cost FPGAs. With densities ranging from 2,910 to 20,060 logic elements, Cyclone devices feature up to 288 Kbits of embedded memory and are based on a 1.5-V all-layer-copper SRAM process. Cyclone devices offer up to two phase-locked loops (PLLs) per device and a hierarchical clocking structure for extensive on- and off-chip clock management. Each device supports a variety of single-ended I/O standards such as LVTTL, LVCMOS, PCI, and SSTL-2/3. Cyclone devices have dedicated circuitry to interface with high-performance external single data rate (SDR) SDRAM and double data rate (DDR) SDRAM and FCRAM memory devices. For more information about the Cyclone device family, visit http://www.altera.com/cyclone .

Pricing and Availability

Altera's Cyclone device family is supported by Mentor Graphics LeonardoSpectrum version 2002d and ModelSim® version 5.6a software, Synopsys FPGA Compiler II version 3.8 software, and Synplicity Synplify 7.2 software.

Quartus II version 2.1 design software is now shipping to all customers on active software subscription. Altera's software subscription program simplifies the process of obtaining Altera design software by consolidating all software products and maintenance charges into one annual subscription payment. The annual subscription for the Altera design software is $2,000 for a node-locked PC license, which includes full-featured Quartus II and MAX+PLUS® II design software, OEM synthesis tools from Mentor Graphics, OEM simulation tools from Model Technology, and 12 months of software upgrades. New or existing customers may obtain a software subscription on-line on the Altera web site, http://www.altera.com , or from Altera distributors worldwide.

About Altera

Altera Corporation is the world's pioneer in system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions. Combining programmable logic technology with software tools, intellectual property, and technical services, Altera provides high-value programmable solutions to approximately 14,000 customers worldwide. More information is available at http://www.altera.com .

NOTE: Altera, The Programmable Solutions Company, the stylized Altera logo, specific device designations and all other words that are identified as trademarks and/or service marks are, unless noted otherwise, the trademarks and service marks of Altera Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Mentor Graphics, ModelSim, LeonardoSpectrum and Precision are trademarks of Mentor Graphics Corporation. Synopsys, FPGA Compiler II and Block Level Incremental Synthesis are trademarks of Synopsys, Inc. Synplify and Synplify Pro are registered trademarks of Synplicity, Inc. All other product or service names are the property of their respective holders.

CONTACT: Ami Dorrell of Altera Corporation, +1-408-544-6397, or newsroom@altera.com.