Virtex™-II and Stratix™ FPGAs add muscle to Altium's vendor-independent platform

SYDNEY, Australia - May 10, 2004 - Altium Limited (ASX: ALU), a leading developer of Windows-based electronics design software, today announced two new daughter boards that enable engineers using Altium's Nexar development system to directly and interactively develop entire processor-based digital systems on Altera's Stratix™ and Xilinx's Virtex™-II FPGAs. These new daughter boards plug into a unique FPGA-based development board that Altium calls a "NanoBoard" (nano-level breadboard), an essential part of Altium's LiveDesign methodology of interactive, real-time development and debugging of FPGA-based designs.

The swappable nature of the different daughter boards available for Altium's NanoBoard enables Altium to offer an FPGA vendor-independent solution for embedded system design that allows users to change the FPGA they are developing or implementing their designs on just by plugging in a different daughter board. "Nexar users can simply re-compile their existing projects to take advantage of the capacity and features of Stratix and Virtex-II FPGAs," said Nick Martin, Joint CEO and founder, Altium.

Martin continued: "To ensure Nexar customers have a wide variety of target devices to choose from we will continue to progressively roll-out daughter boards for popular FPGAs and related devices. We currently have Virtex-II Pro, Spartan 3 and Max II boards under development, with more to follow. Since we house all of the target programmable devices on plug-in daughter boards, our NanoBoard also gives engineers the freedom to easily change the target project architecture, providing the industry's only FPGA vendor-independent FPGA development environment."

Pricing and availability
Altium's NanoBoard is currently delivered with two daughter boards included - the Xilinx Spartan-IIE and the Altera Cyclone daughter boards - for US$995. From today, the Altera Stratix and Xilinx Virtex-II daughter boards are available for purchase separately at US$495 each. However, as part of a current offer, customers that purchase a full Nexar license before June 30 receive both the NanoBoard and the choice of one of the two new daughter boards free.

For more product information, visit www.altium.com/nexar/ or contact your local Altium Sales and Support Center.

About Altium Limited
Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) is a global developer and supplier of electronics design software for the Microsoft Windows environment. Founded in 1985, Altium released the world's first Microsoft Windows-based printed circuit board design tool in 1991 and continues to provide advanced, easy-to-use and affordable software design tools to electronics engineers, designers, and developers worldwide. Altium's products offer tailored solutions covering a range of hardware and software design processes including the well-known Protel, P-CAD and TASKING brands. Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and has sales and support offices in Australia, the United States, Japan and Europe. More information is available at www.altium.com.

Altium USA Media Contact Sarah Seifert
Edelman
800 West El Camino Real Ste. 400
Mountain View, CA 94040
USA
www.edelman.com
Telephone: +1 650 968 4033
Fax: +1 650 968 2201
Email: sarah.seifert@edelman.com

Corporate Media Contact
Jessica Maxwell
Altium Limited
Level 3, 12a Rodborough Road
Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086
Australia
www.altium.com
Telephone: +61 2 9975 7710
Fax: +61 2 9975 7720
Email: jessica.maxwell@altium.com.au