Leading EDA Vendors Support Altera's New HardCopy Stratix Device Family

"We applaud Altera's approach in helping customers accelerate design to volume with the new HardCopy Stratix device family," said Rahul Razdan, corporate vice president, functional verification at Cadence. "The Cadence Incisive verification platform and PCB design flow provide Altera's customers with a solution from design to design-in. FPGA awareness embedded in the Incisive platform and PCB solutions enables our mutual customers to apply advanced ASIC-style verification techniques to FPGAs at each stage, from concept to implementation, helping speed their applications to market."

"Mentor Graphics is committed to providing complete integrated FPGA design solutions and flows that enable designers to take full advantage of the latest in high-performance FPGA technologies. Our industry leading synthesis solutions, LeonardoSpectrum and Precision RTL, now support Altera's new HardCopy Stratix device family," said Simon Bloch, general manager of the Mentor Graphics design creation division. "Mentor's new Precision Synthesis solution delivers excellent QoR for Altera(R) technologies while providing advanced incremental design analysis to accelerate the synthesis process by reducing design iterations, while our LeonardoSpectrum solution continues to provide powerful control and optimization features associated with workstation-based ASIC tools."

"As an integral part of Altera's verification solution, the ModelSim tool supports the complete line of Altera devices, and we are excited to add the HardCopy Stratix device family to that list," said Robert Hum, vice president and general manager of the design, verification, and test division of Mentor Graphics. "The ModelSim tool offers a suite of products that address the entire range of programmable devices, and our best-in-class ease-of-use and integrated debug capabilities provide Altera users with a total verification platform that accelerates time-to-market."

"Synopsys' synthesis, timing analysis and RTL verification solutions form the core of the majority of advanced FPGA and ASIC design flows, making them a natural fit for the HardCopy Stratix device family. In addition, Synopsys' FPGA synthesis solution supports an incremental flow, enabling designers to preserve proven sections of their design while implementing final changes before they commit to a HardCopy implementation," said Rich Goldman, vice president of strategic market development at Synopsys, Inc. "Altera and Synopsys have teamed to provide best-in-class solutions to our mutual customers. The extension of this collaboration to the HardCopy Stratix family helps ensure that designers will achieve superior results with any implementation option they choose."

"We are pleased to provide our mutual customers with timely support for Altera's new HardCopy Stratix device family," said Jeff Garrison, director of FPGA products at Synplicity. "We leveraged our extensive expertise in mapping to complex programmable architectures in order to deliver great results for this new family. In addition to support for complex digital signal processing (DSP) and memory blocks in the Stratix(TM) devices, our market-leading Synplify and Synplify Pro synthesis tools deliver excellent area utilization to further bring down cost for the higher-volume applications HardCopy Stratix devices serve."

Altera's newly introduced Quartus II version 3.0 design software offers system engineers a dual design path, one for Altera's industry-leading FPGAs and the other for HardCopy Stratix designs. This dual path makes it easier for engineers developing high-volume applications to opt for a low-cost HardCopy approach at the beginning of their design cycle, helping to further reduce development time and costs. The HardCopy Stratix device family is supported by Mentor Graphics' LeonardoSpectrum version 2003b, Precision RTL version 2003b and ModelSim version 5.7c and Synplicity Synplify version 7.3.

"Together with our EDA partners, Altera is able to provide a seamless system-on-a-programmable-chip design flow that maximizes the performance of our HardCopy Stratix devices and allows designers to focus on system-level issues rather than development tool interoperability," said Tim Southgate, Altera's vice president of software and tools marketing.

Pricing and Availability

Quartus II version 3.0 software is now available to all customers on active subscription. 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(R) II design software, OEM simulation tools from Mentor Graphics and 12 months of software upgrades. New or existing customers may obtain a software subscription at the Altera eStore on the Altera website, http://www.altera.com/, or from Altera distributors worldwide.

About HardCopy Stratix Devices

Altera's HardCopy Stratix devices are the industry's only low-cost mask-programmed devices with ASIC-level performance, price, and features that customers can take to production virtually risk-free. This unique ASIC alternative is directly accessible for design through Altera's Quartus II version 3.0 design software. The HardCopy Stratix devices maintain the same features as the successful Stratix FPGAs and on average a 50 percent performance increase and up to a 40 percent decrease in power consumption over the equivalent Stratix FPGAs. Altera's HardCopy Stratix devices are ideal for high-performance, high-volume applications in the networking, wireless communication, high-end consumer electronics, industrial, test, and medical markets. For more information about the HardCopy Stratix devices, please visit http://www.altera.com/hardcopystratix

About Altera

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, 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. All other product or service names are the property of their respective holders.

  Editor Contact:
   Bruce Fienberg
   Altera Corporation
   408-544-6397
   newsroom@altera.com

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

Web site: http://www.altera.com/