Altera's Cyclone Device Family Meets Industry-Grade Temperature Requirements

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Altera Corporation (Nasdaq: ALTR) today announced that its new Cyclone(TM) device family will be available in industrial grade to meet the needs of customers building mission-critical applications requiring functionality within the -40 C to +85 C temperature range.

Designed from the ground up for volume-driven applications, the Cyclone device family offers cost-conscious designers of high-volume systems in the consumer, communications, industrial, and automotive markets the benefits of programmable logic at ASIC prices. Customers building systems for the industrial market can design Cyclone devices for applications such as factory automation, process and flow controls, wireless base stations, in-cabin automotive, and testers for factory-floor applications environments.

"Cyclone FPGAs are a great fit for industrial applications, and using them will reduce our costs, reinforcing our leadership position in the industrial automation market," said Matthias Metzler, research and design engineer, Siemens Automation & Drives (A&D) AS. "We will use the low-cost Cyclone FPGAs in the development of our next-generation highly-available and fail-safe programmable logic controller."

The Cyclone device family will also be available in extended temperature-grade for military, aerospace, and high-temperature automotive applications. This new class of device goes through extensive product characterization and reliability stress testing to withstand extreme temperature variations to be qualified as industrial grade.

"Industrial customers today are building common, modular platforms that can be specialized to meet the multiple needs of their marketplaces, thus allowing companies to reduce their development costs," said Jeff Lamparter, director of the industrial and automotive business unit at Altera. "The new industrial-temperature Cyclone devices offer these designers the ability to solve their applications needs with the customization and efficiency necessary to bring products to market. Industrial customers now have an economical and viable alternative to the development costs and schedule issues associated with ASICs."

The Cyclone device family was designed for system manufacturers wanting the reprogrammability of an FPGA with the cost-effectiveness of an ASIC. When combined with Altera's extensive intellectual property (IP) portfolio, free Quartus® II Web Edition version 2.1 service pack 1 design software, the Nios® soft-core embedded processor, and Altera's new low-cost serial configuration devices, Cyclone devices are will be the lowest-cost complete system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solution available today.

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 .

Availability

The Cyclone industrial grade device family will be in full production in the first half of 2003. Software support is available immediately with the Quartus® II version 2.1 design software. For customers that do not have an active subscription to Altera's tool suite, the Quartus II Web Edition software is available for free from Altera's web site, giving customers access to the entire Cyclone device family without charge.

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 .

Safe Harbor

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words that imply a future state such as "expected" or that imply that a particular future event or events will occur such as "will." Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainty, including without limitation the risk that future performance is dependent on product development schedules, the design performance of software and other tools, as well as the company's and third parties' development technology and manufacture capabilities. Please refer to the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, copies of which are available from the company without charge.

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. All other product or service names are the property of their respective holder.

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